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[Xgamer4]

Champions: 18
http://dobrazupa.org/tournament/0.19/clans/gravenous.html

Miners: 51
http://dobrazupa.org/tournament/0.19/clans/icytea.html

Blacksmiths: 66
http://dobrazupa.org/tournament/0.19/clans/xgamer4.html

Nobles: 127
http://dobrazupa.org/tournament/0.19/clans/frankhovis.html

[IcyTea31]

Miners and Blacksmiths seem to have had plenty of unlucky near misses, so I'm sure their luck will turn around soon.

Thanks for the faith. My 6-rune splat was a new personal record. I did learn a lot and see why I failed, though, so I might actually get a win in this tournament.

[Tiruin]

Oh, thanks Xgamer. Seems we're not doing as badly as it sounded - there's still hope for a top ten finish for the Champions, and Miners and Blacksmiths seem to have had plenty of unlucky near misses, so I'm sure their luck will turn around soon.

Also I noticed the captain of the team in the #1 spot is fellow Bay12er Ultraviolent4. We really need to poach him back next year

I'm getting hammered due to poor internet connection (so I can't play that much online ;~;). Hope I can do at least 1 win by the 19th or so.

[Graven]

Ouch.

I haven't been watching the stats (next time - or this time, if Xgamer4 can be arsed - we should really post links to each team's page in the thread OP), but I'm getting the impression we're not doing so well?

Maybe .19 has made things significantly harder!

We're not doing that badly, mostly because everyone else seems to be doing a poor job as well.

What I feel .19 did is force characters to specialize a lot earlier, since the shortened levels decrease the chances of good equip AND require a stronger character to beat at the same time. It also forces characters to depend much more on whatever they find, rather than be able to plan a build and sort of barely hold on until they find the required gear.

Which is something I absolutely hate, as I always pre-plan my builds 

[vogonpoet]

Huh, I usually feel silly if I skip the first two altars I find (unless they are unknown, I swear I chose those like, 5 times, I got Xom 4 times) ... what exactly are you waiting for at the bottom of Lair?  Hoping for Jiva?

My feeling on the current version is that it has made the tension felt between the contradiction in planing your build and adapting to what you find more complicated.

a) The tightened pre-rune XP budget means you can't afford to muck around too much with your skills.
b) The fewer items generated mean you really do have to use what you find, rather than just keep hoping for the item which will make your build to drop.

So no training for items/spells you haven't yet found, and less bouncing around between skills for items/spells you have found.

Maybe that is why I like SpEn so much - you basically have 3/4 of the tools you need to win in your starting book, can get those tools online before Lair, and then just do whatever the hell you feel like. Going Ash just makes the SpEn XP budget even sillier.

[Damiac]

And yet the big names over at the dungeon crawl forums insist the game gets easier with every version...
Of course you also get gems like "You are guaranteed to win if you survive past D1/d2/temple/lair whatever", and "There are no unavoidable deaths outside extremely early game", and "There's way too much experience available in a 3 rune game".  Somehow some (influential) people insist that there need to be more unavoidable deaths, to make the game more 'challenging'.

I don't know... maybe we need a version of crawl for "casuals" like me...

[Graven]

To be fair it's reasonable of great players to request the game be made more difficult, since they have already mastered the current state. Checking last tournament, Yermak had 30 wins. You can safely expect such players to require further challenges. In the 0.12 tournament the most wins are 19, and I ended up 124th with a single win.

It's also expected of small, echo-chamber communities like the Crawl forums to adhere to such players' opinions without really trying to rationalize it to themselves.

Balancing the game around such players, however, is an objective mistake.

Also on the other hand, none of the great players I admired way back ago are currently playing, so some players dislike the current state of the game. I prefer being able to play sub-par combos without feeling like every step is a struggle against the stupid RNG to get a ring of rCold.

[Damiac]

The problem is, to achieve those kind of win rates, you need to be playing with optimal strategy and tactics.  The kind of stuff that's described as painfully boring, like luring every enemy, etc.

If you balance around that kind of play, then either the game is too hard, or it's too boring.  That's a bad state to move toward.

Edit: Of course, to be fair, the devs are always trying to work toward making optimal play less boring, and/or to make boring play less optimal.

[vogonpoet]

Balancing the game around such players, however, is an objective mistake.

I feel the Crawl devs are actually pretty good about this: dpeg seems to post a reminder to the Tavern regulars that the vast majority of players have never won a game about twice a month. If every suggestion by a 10 percenter was implemented then it would indeed be pretty hard, but that's pretty far from the case - the devs are also pretty good at taking the vocal minority with a pinch of salt.


edit:

/pretty

[Jiharo]

Had a luckiest run so far with deep dwarf finding vampiric artifact as well as very early dragon scales. Still managed to get myself stupidly killed on Lair:6 despite a bagful of wands and other toys.

Re:difficulty, there's a good article by one of Nethack developers about classifying roguelikes as "high-headroom" and "low-headroom" ones and Crawl definitely is "low-headroom" one.

[TheDarkStar]

I was not aware what your character got called if you reached level 27 in staves.

Now my lajataur is the Chief of Staff .

Edit: And I died in Depths 5 because I took 65 damage from a draconian casting crystal spear. I had 40 AC on top of that, too, so it must have done upwards of 100 damage.

[ZeroGravitas]

Edit: And I died in Depths 5 because I took 65 damage from a draconian casting crystal sphere. I had 40 AC on top of that, too, so it must have done upwards of 100 damage.

Crystal sphere? Do you mean LCS? I think the damage is not reducible and monsters typically have some absurd damage spell rolls now like 3d30 or something. 65 isn't even that high, unfortunately.

[Not good with names]

Hey, we're not doing so bad afterall, snagged the Shoals rune at XL 13!  That's a few points, assuming we don't see some ridiculous stuff.

And a terrible Spider layout kills me.  Boo.  No downstairs on half the map plus a Ghost moth/Spark wasp/Snail combo that I just didn't play correctly. (The answer was Banish snail, then spark wasp before GM drains all my MP)

[Aoi]

Edit: And I died in Depths 5 because I took 65 damage from a draconian casting crystal sphere. I had 40 AC on top of that, too, so it must have done upwards of 100 damage.

Crystal sphere? Do you mean LCS? I think the damage is not reducible and monsters typically have some absurd damage spell rolls now like 3d30 or something. 65 isn't even that high, unfortunately.

3d35, irresistable, according to the wiki.

The problem is, to achieve those kind of win rates, you need to be playing with optimal strategy and tactics.  The kind of stuff that's described as painfully boring, like luring every enemy, etc.

I find myself to be less interested in win rates, and most strategies that people who can consistently win with short playtime or turncount because they're more likely to be things I'd actually utilize. Setting up blind kill corners on every floor? Yeah, sure, I can do that... but tedious and boring. How about stuff like rc settings instead? force_more_message = hydra, for example, has saved many a troll...

[Tiruin]

And yet the big names over at the dungeon crawl forums insist the game gets easier with every version...[...]
I don't know... maybe we need a version of crawl for "casuals" like me...

I'd LOVE to know those ideas that are not-really-familiar to us players Because that'd help a lot in facing whatever is happening.
Back to tournament details--I'd have been having a blast actually DOING something, if my net wasn't so interruptive :I Is there still hope for me to achieve a win (I can do this! It's just a few more bodies away!) until the 20th?