help choosing a game

[Xecutor]

Katana is best because of the speed I assume?

Who knows. Melee damage, attack speed and hit rate are hidden parameters.
You can only gain some vague empirical knowledge about them.
Or use wizmode

They do explain the skill levelling in the docs, I think it's actually a pretty realistic system. Consider that a troll wouldn't naturally be good at spellcasting - he'd have to put some extra effort into it, especially if he started as a berserker or fighter. So reading scrolls makes sense as a way to practice beginner spellcasting.

IMO if troll want to learn spellcasting, he should concentrate on this... Why he MUST interupt his learning by tearing off some limbs from poor nearby kobolds?
How it helps learning spellcasting? Where is logic here?

Probably at first there were only combat skills. Fighting, weapon skills, armor, dodge.
All this skills can be trained in combat only. Even traps disarming involves some risk.
But spellcasting is different. Leaving 'train by use' as it is for spells leaves wide opening to munchkinism.
Than this (IMO) not-so-smart exp pool system was invented...

I don't really mind 'gain level, spend points' system. It's not logicall at all.
But it does not force you to do stupid and unnatural things.

[gruff]

That's a good point. I think it's ultimately a hangover from the original Dungeons and Dragons, which introduced the system of gaining experience by killing things, experience which then automatically improves skills not involved in killing.

Which brings up an interesting question: what WOULD be a better skill system? A system in which an unintelligent troll fighter could practice spellcasting without having to kill anything? Where would the experience come from?

I don't have answers.

[Skeletor]

Interesting discussion!

What about the Adom system?
The more you cast spells, the more you become proficient in casting them.

[gruff]

That happens in Crawl too but only when you've already got the spells skill and you've got XP in your skills bank. Xecutor is talking about the weirdness of going from level 0 to level 1 in a skill by using XP earned from killing.

[Skeletor]

In Adom you improve casting skills without needing to kill enemies, and this makes sense.
This solution could be implemented even in Crawl; no scumming could be possible because of the hunger raise induced by casting spells.

[jim]

In ADOM you could wander in the mountains for years and years with your Elf, killing Lone Red Dragons until you had a pile of genie rings that reached to the sky. I guess what I mean is ADOM is a game that also lets you play Angband if you want, Chaos Points notwithstanding.

I'm not saying that there ADOM's a bad game - I think it's a great game. But Crawl works hard to keep grinding to an abosolute minimum, and the XP --> skill system is an integral, elegant part of that. I do agree that it's hard to wrap one's head around at first.

And heck, Skeletor, you would have Crawl abandon the Mummy Necromancer? Isn't he like your cousin? Jerk.

[Xecutor]

That happens in Crawl too but only when you've already got the spells skill and you've got XP in your skills bank. Xecutor is talking about the weirdness of going from level 0 to level 1 in a skill by using XP earned from killing.

No. It's not about lvl0->lvl1 only.
It's about all skills that are not used often.
If you want to cast haste, you need enchantment at relatively high level.
But if you don't need any other enchantment, you need to do cast something meaningless
every time there is exp in the pool.
Have you ever tried to train fighting with caster?
Kill powerful foe with spell. Return to dungeon, find some weaklings,
swing with sharp piece of metal at them (you don't even need to kill them, just attack).
Repeat. At what point this isn't some perverted form of grinding?

Adom spells have limited amount of usages.
You need to read spellbook again to replenish usages.
But if you want some spell at helpful level, you can just train it.
Without need to do something stupid.
Just make sure, that you have enough books with this spell.

In DCSS
1) there is mummy (btw mummy of sif muna is amazing, you can get it to mid game).
2) there are spells that do not cost hunger at all at some point.

I don't really know why they didn't make training of combat spells by damaging
enemies and training of non-combat spells by usage only.

[gruff]

No. It's not about lvl0->lvl1 only.
It's about all skills that are not used often.
If you want to cast haste, you need enchantment at relatively high level.
But if you don't need any other enchantment, you need to do cast something meaningless
every time there is exp in the pool.

No, you just have to cast an enchantment spell when there's XP in the pool - and that spell can be haste. No need for meaningless spells.

Have you ever tried to train fighting with caster?
Kill powerful foe with spell. Return to dungeon, find some weaklings,
swing with sharp piece of metal at them (you don't even need to kill them, just attack).
Repeat. At what point this isn't some perverted form of grinding?

I guess I don't see that as unrealistic or weird. A skilled magician gets battle experience while using magic, then tries physical combat on weaker enemies, because he's not sure of his new skill yet. And because skills can level up pretty quickly when you've got a big XP pool, it doesn't take that long - not grinding.

Example: I usually play an MDFi and aim to get a crossbow. These rarely show up before DL 10. When I get one, I wait till I have a big XP pool then I make sure I shoot the bow as often as possible, plunging all those points into the crossbow skill.

Also, you can turn off skills on the (m) screen, which means they won't train when you don't want them to, saving points for the skills you do want.

I don't really know why they didn't make training of combat spells by damaging
enemies and training of non-combat spells by usage only.

Non combat spells are trained by usage but the points that go into that training come from combat. The points have to come from somewhere - where if not combat, which is what Crawl is about?

[Xecutor]

No. It's not about lvl0->lvl1 only.
It's about all skills that are not used often.
If you want to cast haste, you need enchantment at relatively high level.
But if you don't need any other enchantment, you need to do cast something meaningless
every time there is exp in the pool.

No, you just have to cast an enchantment spell when there's XP in the pool - and that spell can be haste. No need for meaningless spells.

No. You can't. Haste is high level spell. And miscast effect can be not very pleasant.
You need to pump a lot of exp into enchantment before you will be able to cast haste more or less reliably.

Have you ever tried to train fighting with caster?
Kill powerful foe with spell. Return to dungeon, find some weaklings,
swing with sharp piece of metal at them (you don't even need to kill them, just attack).
Repeat. At what point this isn't some perverted form of grinding?

I guess I don't see that as unrealistic or weird. A skilled magician gets battle experience while using magic, then tries physical combat on weaker enemies, because he's not sure of his new skill yet. And because skills can level up pretty quickly when you've got a big XP pool, it doesn't take that long - not grinding.

IMO grinding is effortless action that grant you some reward.
I can kill draconians with my caster. But I can't even try to engage in close combat with them.
I kill pack of draconians in zot, return to dungeon, find someone more or less harmless,
and pump exp into fighting. Repeat. And it takes a lot of time to pump fighting to a level
when I will be able to use it with more or less serious opponents,  to avoid long trips.
Worst thing in this - I don't really need fighting!
I don't want to fight with sword! I'm spellcaster!
But training fighting is the only way to increase hp.
And with hp below some threshold you can't enter several areas without risk of being instakilled.

Example: I usually play an MDFi and aim to get a crossbow. These rarely show up before DL 10. When I get one, I wait till I have a big XP pool then I make sure I shoot the bow as often as possible, plunging all those points into the crossbow skill.

That's bad example. Actually pure fighters usually do not care about exp pool and such at all.
You just kill thing. With sword or crossbow - it doesn't matter.
Firing crossbow when there are some points in exp pool doesn't hinder too much,
fighter are tough enough to withstand a few extra punches, and you don't need to
find specific enemy for that.

Pure specialized casters are nearly the same.
But both pure fighters and pure casters are very dependent of equipment.
Even in order to simply win with 3 runes you need some serious luck.

Also, you can turn off skills on the (m) screen, which means they won't train when you don't want them to, saving points for the skills you do want.

Add 'almost' there. Even turned off skills can consume exp from pool time to time.

I don't really know why they didn't make training of combat spells by damaging
enemies and training of non-combat spells by usage only.

Non combat spells are trained by usage but the points that go into that training come from combat. The points have to come from somewhere - where if not combat, which is what Crawl is about?

And that is what I don't like in crawl the most.

Imagine that you decided to learn how to make macrame.
You got book with lessons and some threads.
You successfully completed couple of lessons.
Your progress suddenly stops. You can't do new tricks, no matter how hard you try
and how much time you practice.
Now you need to take swatter and kill a few flies.
After killing them, you can make new tricks easily.
Where is logic here?

Putting logic aside (there is no much logic in fireball anyway), game forces me to do boring actions
to overcome some artificial barriers. They call this 'balance'. I call this 'bullshit'.
Both words start with 'b'.

[gruff]

No. You can't. Haste is high level spell. And miscast effect can be not very pleasant.
You need to pump a lot of exp into enchantment before you will be able to cast haste more or less reliably.

That still makes sense to me. To get better at enchanting you practice enchanting.

IMO grinding is effortless action that grant you some reward.
I can kill draconians with my caster. But I can't even try to engage in close combat with them.
I kill pack of draconians in zot, return to dungeon, find someone more or less harmless,
and pump exp into fighting. Repeat. And it takes a lot of time to pump fighting to a level
when I will be able to use it with more or less serious opponents,  to avoid long trips.
Worst thing in this - I don't really need fighting!
I don't want to fight with sword! I'm spellcaster!
But training fighting is the only way to increase hp.
And with hp below some threshold you can't enter several areas without risk of being instakilled.

I have to take your word for this as I've never been in Zot and I rarely play spellcasters. However it still sounds realistic to me. I wouldn't go up against Mike Tyson without practicing on some weaker dudes first.

That's bad example. Actually pure fighters usually do not care about exp pool and such at all.
You just kill thing. With sword or crossbow - it doesn't matter.
Firing crossbow when there are some points in exp pool doesn't hinder too much,
fighter are tough enough to withstand a few extra punches, and you don't need to
find specific enemy for that.

The example illustrates my point that the XP pool system is not a major hindrance if you pay attention. I can get five levels in crossbows in a very short time, before being sent to the Abyss and slaughtered as usual. Also fighters have to make sure they practice traps, and evocations, and get a couple levels in spellcasting, all of which requires XP pool managment. Again, it's realistic: if I'm wandering around the dungeon I am going to have to put conscious effort into learning certain skills.

Pure specialized casters are nearly the same.
But both pure fighters and pure casters are very dependent of equipment.
Even in order to simply win with 3 runes you need some serious luck.

This I agree with.

Add 'almost' there. Even turned off skills can consume exp from pool time to time.

I almost did but didn't revise before posting. They do consume some but it's much slower.

And that is what I don't like in crawl the most.

Imagine that you decided to learn how to make macrame.
You got book with lessons and some threads.
You successfully completed couple of lessons.
Your progress suddenly stops. You can't do new tricks, no matter how hard you try
and how much time you practice.
Now you need to take swatter and kill a few flies.
After killing them, you can make new tricks easily.
Where is logic here?

Putting logic aside (there is no much logic in fireball anyway), game forces me to do boring actions
to overcome some artificial barriers. They call this 'balance'. I call this 'bullshit'.
Both words start with 'b'.

Have you considered that all games are artificial barriers.

[Xecutor]

That still makes sense to me. To get better at enchanting you practice enchanting.

I don't mind practicing at all.
I dislike the fact that in order to practice you need some exp in exp pool.
Even for practicing non-combat skills.
It's clear that in order to cast high level enchantment you have to
practice on low level for quite some time.
But what connection have haste with killing monsters?
Why I MUST kill monsters for, say, casting swiftness to become "practice enchantment"?
If I don't kill monsters than by casting swiftness I'll just waste my mana and won't
improve in enchantments a bit.

I have to take your word for this as I've never been in Zot and I rarely play spellcasters. However it still sounds realistic to me. I wouldn't go up against Mike Tyson without practicing on some weaker dudes first.

Once again. I don't mind practicing on weak dudes!
It's very reasonable (except for a fact that I don't really need that fighting skill at all).
But in order for this practice to be of any effect, I need to kill pack of strong
monsters with my powerful spells. Why?
What is connection between killing mobs with spells and practicing fighting skill with sword?
And as I stated, you need to find some bad ass monsters for a high level character
to gain some serious exp in the pool. And than find some weakling at the other end of dungeon...
It's just time consuming and not a single bit difficult.

Have you considered that all games are artificial barriers.

But almost always there is a fun way to overcome these barriers.
That's what games are about. Overcoming barriers in a FUN way.
If all you need is to press button 1500 times in order to progress further, that's not fun at all (IMO).

[gruff]

I don't mind practicing at all.
I dislike the fact that in order to practice you need some exp in exp pool.
Even for practicing non-combat skills.
It's clear that in order to cast high level enchantment you have to
practice on low level for quite some time.
But what connection have haste with killing monsters?
Why I MUST kill monsters for, say, casting swiftness to become "practice enchantment"?
If I don't kill monsters than by casting swiftness I'll just waste my mana and won't
improve in enchantments a bit.

Let's go back to your troll character. He doesn't start out with spellcasting skill, so there's got to be a mechanism for him to learn spellcasting. Are you suggesting that troll berserkers be able to cast spells right off the bat? What would that look like?

Once again. I don't mind practicing on weak dudes!
It's very reasonable (except for a fact that I don't really need that fighting skill at all).
But in order for this practice to be of any effect, I need to kill pack of strong
monsters with my powerful spells. Why?
What is connection between killing mobs with spells and practicing fighting skill with sword?
And as I stated, you need to find some bad ass monsters for a high level character
to gain some serious exp in the pool. And than find some weakling at the other end of dungeon...
It's just time consuming and not a single bit difficult.

You could always start practising the skill early on, not leaving it till you reach zot. Surely you can do it in the lair or the hive or some other corpsefest. And the connection, as I see it, is that general experience in combat, which stands for experience in dungeoneering in general, gives you the savvy to know WHAT you need to practice You can't walk into a dungeon as a newly graduated mage and expect to pick up a claymore.

But almost always there is a fun way to overcome these barriers.
That's what games are about. Overcoming barriers in a FUN way.
If all you need is to press button 1500 times in order to progress further, that's not fun at all (IMO).

Try a different class/race combo. OR...suggest how Crawl could be improved. What would the ideal skill system look like?

[Z]

OR...suggest how Crawl could be improved. What would the ideal skill system look like?

I second this. IMO the Crawl system is the best I know of. Well, at least the three general rules it is based on: (1) increase skills by practice, (2) you need to spend your XP pool to practice skills, (3) XP is gained by killing powerful monsters.

The first rule: (1) increase skills by practice. The alternative is (1') when you choose at level up what skills you want to increase, as in e.g. ADOM. I think (1) is much more logical. (1') means that you increase your skill even if you have never used it, you just think that it seems useful some time in the future.

The second rule: (2) you need to spend your XP pool to practice skills. What are the other options?

(2a) you cannot practice skills at all. That makes sense actually. You have practiced adventuring for several years, and you should not expect that another week in Dungeon of Zot will make any difference. But that's not what we want.

(2b) you can practice for free. Then you just stand in one place at the beginning of game and raise all your skills to maximum. That's boring, the game would be better then if it just assumed that your PC has done this before entering Dungeon of Zot and already has this great skills. That will make the whole skill system useless and boils down to 2a.

Sure, it is a bit illogical that practicing does not work when your pool is empty. What do you think is logical? I think the system is the best when it encourages you to spend some time practicing and some time doing real fighting. But it needs to forbid you from spending too much time practicing. Crawl system does this very well.

(2c) the limit on your skills is based on your general XP level, not on your XP pool. This is less logical and you lose diversity. All characters will max out all their skills and look the same.

(2d) you can practice your skills just for practice (that is, without gaining anything useful except skill increase), but it takes time and thus costs you food, which is a valuable resource. That seems to make sense, but I think it could not work so well in practice (you would probably require some very unnatural food requirements if you want this balanced, like requiring lots of food for increasing skills when at high level, so you cannot get high level in the beginning of the game, and this in turn would mean that you could not practically raise your skills by just using them for real battle).

(3) we surely don't want players to get XP by doing uninteresting things. Getting XP by defeating powerful monsters has its problems, but this option seems the best we have. There have been lots of threads about what possible other mechanisms of getting XP. Seems everyone would like to have something else, but we don't have clear ideas how to achieve that.

[Xecutor]

Let's go back to your troll character. He doesn't start out with spellcasting skill, so there's got to be a mechanism for him to learn spellcasting. Are you suggesting that troll berserkers be able to cast spells right off the bat? What would that look like?

Once again. I DON'T MIND PRACTICING!
For a troll to learn spell casting he need to read N scrolls.
Right now he need pack of scrolls to the left and pack of kobolds to the right.
Read one scroll, smack one kobold. That's oddest way to learn spellcasting.

You could always start practising the skill early on, not leaving it till you reach zot.

I can't! Early on spellcasters are so weak, that attempt to practice fighting with
regular dungeon critters can end up with death.

And I'll repeat myself again - I'm practicing fighting as a mage only to gain hp.
Not to gain fighting skill itself.
If there was a way to pump max mana to some reasonably high value,
so virtual hp of a mage with guardian spirit will be on the comparable level of hp of
a fighter, than mage wouldn't need to practice fighting.

Try a different class/race combo. OR...suggest how Crawl could be improved. What would the ideal skill system look like?

IMO combat related skills should be trained in combat (only).
Without usage of exp pool. Or with faster training when exp pool is used.
Of course using high level skill to kill low level monster shouldn't train skill at all.
However lvl27 mage should be able to train fighting to, say, lvl13 or so, without need of exp pool.
I mean training in a dungeon on regular monsters.
Further training should be possible only with exp pool or on higher level monsters.

Things are difficult with non-combat skills. For example enchantments.
And especially spellcasting in general.
Probably just casting enchantment spell should train both enchantment and spellcasting.
But up to some level. Level 1 spells up to skill level 3, level 2 up to 5 or so, and so on.
If char have spellcasting 20 and enchantments 1, casting low level enchantments should
train enchantments without exp pool, but spellcasting should be trained (if turned on)
only if there is exp in the pool.

Low level mages won't be able to train some skill in a quiet corner because of hunger.
When hunger cost of spell will drop to zero, this spell won't train anything anyway.
If mage have some supply of food and decides to burn it for training enchantments, why prohibit this?

Armor skill, dodging, stealth, should be trained directly by current exp value of a monster you are dealing with.
Traps should probably provide exp value that depends on depth.

Btw weapon skills in adom are trained by usage only.
And level up value of non-combat skills that are not used at all is very small, and become 0 at some point without training.

In M&M skills leveling was performed by trainer. You pay money, trainer rises your skills

In IVAN everything is training by usage.
But there is harsh autoleveling system.
The stronger you get, the nastier monsters are generated in next level.

[Skeletor]

I know I sound boring but I personally really like the Adom system: every time you perform an action, there is a little chanche your related skill can improve, regardless of things like Crawl exp pool. This is after all enough realistic and doesn't force the player to behave innaturaly.

And heck, Skeletor, you would have Crawl abandon the Mummy Necromancer? Isn't he like your cousin? Jerk.

Haha, good one