Legalized items/exp farming

[Xecutor]

A lot of authors are trying to prevent players from farming. Sometimes this includes artificial limitations and not very logical/interesting mechanics.
But what if instead of preventing farming, you allow farming as integral part of the game.
For instance - you need 20 bat wings for quest or may be crafting recipe.
You go to the cave in appropriate equipment, with enough healing potions and food.
Than press 'f'arm key, enter end conditions and wait a little, while AI kills bats all around the cave.
The same with exp. You need a little till next level. You know that you can kill monsters
in this area relatively easily. Why not 'f'arm till level up then?

[Bosman]

Theoretically, why not? However, my first impression is that if a player wants to skip playing and just let the AI fast-forward some tasks for him then there's something wrong with the gameplay.
In the bat wings example, why not change the quest or recipe to get just one wing that's harder to find? The amount (20) seems like just a cheap move to make the player spend more time with the game. And the exp example - this seems like the whole game is crap and only getting achievements or levels is fun.
In my opinion the core gameplay should be so interesting that you actually want to do it. Things like leveling up should be secondary - a byproduct of having fun with the game.

[Vanguard]

What purpose would this mechanic serve?  How would it make the game fun?

What's to stop the player from telling the game that they want to autofarm 9 million rats and instantly hit the level cap?

Using bad mechanics to cover up other bad mechanics is never a good idea.  In this case it would be better to remove the 20 bat wing quest entirely.

[miki151]

Farming can be fun, as long as it promotes clever play instead of repeating the same action dozens of times. Not giving the player enough food would solve the 9 million rats problem.

[Vanguard]

repeating the same action dozens of times.

That's what this thread is about.

[Rickton]

So you want to put in a "play the game for me" button in your game?
Don't get me wrong, I'm OK with Crawl (and that little time-saver is probably the reason Crawl's the roguelike I've played the most), but think about what you're doing here. You're basically admitting that you're putting in a part of the game that isn't really fun to play, and just giving people a way to skip it. Why even put it in at all if you know nobody will want to play it?

[Gr3yling]

What purpose would this mechanic serve?  How would it make the game fun?

What's to stop the player from telling the game that they want to autofarm 9 million rats and instantly hit the level cap?

Using bad mechanics to cover up other bad mechanics is never a good idea.  In this case it would be better to remove the 20 bat wing quest entirely.

I have thought about this kind of autoplay feature before, also.  I'm not sure I would call this feature a "bad mechanic" per se, I'm just not sure it would really be needed in a game that gave the player alternatives to bat farming.  A task is so trivial that a player can do it in a completely mindless way shouldn't still be giving them a useful reward.

But I don't want too quick to dismiss this idea.  Xecutor, can you please tell us more about how you thought that it might be used?  Are you thinking that it is impossible to completely remove situations like the one you described from the game, so there should be a way to make them more manageable?

Oh, and if there was a time limit, that might discourage players from abusing this feature to reach nine million xp by killing bats.  Or, just if bats stopped giving xp after 500 had been killed, or whatever.  I realize that just leads to more questions related to balance, though.   

Incidentally, I think that I am now agreeing with zasvid regarding level grinding, at least as far as this discussion goes.

[Zireael]

Don't we have this stuff in Angband already?

[Z]

Roguelikes sometimes contain stuff which is fun the first time you do it, and boring afterwards. For example, answering the character background questions in ADOM, solving the Sokoban in NetHack, and so on. I think it is acceptable to automate these (provided that the player has already done the job).

[miki151]

Nethack should have had randomized Sokoban levels for a long time... [puts randomized Sokoban on to-do list for Zagadka  ]

I liked how the farming techniques in Nethack require quite a lot of thought and preparation. I think there is value in that. The question is how to skip the long and boring repeating actions. Maybe a good designer could give an answer.

[Z]

Even with randomized Sokoban levels, some people would not like the puzzle, but they still would feel compelled to solve them again and again, to reap the rewards. In this case, having intelligent auto-play as an alternative could help -- the disliked puzzle could be replaced by taking costs. (As mentioned in my comment on http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2013/10/episode-81-puzzles.html )

[Gr3yling]

Even with randomized Sokoban levels, some people would not like the puzzle, but they still would feel compelled to solve them again and again, to reap the rewards. In this case, having intelligent auto-play as an alternative could help -- the disliked puzzle could be replaced by taking costs. (As mentioned in my comment on http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2013/10/episode-81-puzzles.html )

I feel like Z is right. There must be something that could be done with the idea.  Xecutor was brave enough to put it forward, and I feel like we (including myself) did not give it enough of a chance.  It is much easier to say that other people's ideas will not work than it is to help discover ways that they can work.

Realistically, don't most roguelikes have segments where players often think: "well, it sure would be nice to skip this section and move on to the next?"  Sure you can say that an ideal game just wouldn't have parts like that, but that's not reality, is it?  So, Xecutor seems like (s)he is just trying to address a very real problem here.

[Xecutor]

1) Show me these wonderful games with amazing mechanics with quests and advanced crafting which will NEVER force player to do repetitive/boring actions.
2) The point was in "in appropriate equipment, with enough healing potions and food.". i.e. you can't do this infinitely. And you have to carefully setup this. For example add the condition of when chracter must heal and what source of healing to use. If killing low level monsters won't cover expenses, you won't be able to continue autofarming for too long, no?
3) Crawl do not have neither quests nor crafting. And yet I wouldn't mind having 'autokill' option for enemies that no longer are a threat to the character. As traveling from D:15 to stash at D:5 might be somewhat annoying.

[miki151]

Yes, auto travel across the dungeon is something many RLs would benefit from, much more than other kinds of auto play.

Here is an idea. Turn farming into a puzzle that gets harder with time. For example, maintaining a special pattern of the puddings in Nethack, otherwise it all falls apart (I guess it would be similar to how herbs work in Adom). This would turn a repeated boring exercise into an increasing mental effort.

[Vanguard]

How about instead of automating tedious actions, you take them out the game.