Pixel Dungeon
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The main problem with changing the auto-target is deciding what to aim at. Currently the behaviour is simple, it targets whatever enemy is your current focus, but there's no equivalent for allies. Perhaps in these cases autotarget should just be off entirely.
It could be coded differently for helpful spells versus attacks. Helpful spells should default to yourself. And then you can tap an ally if that's who you prefer to bless, or a bee, or an amok enemy, or whomever.
What about wand of warding, ally-helping darts, regrowth bombs, wand of transfusion, etc.
These things are more complicated than they seem, and trying to assume what the player wants to target outside of simple 'just highlight the currently focused enemy' starts to get into a mess of circumstantial cases very quickly. This is why I've preferred not to make a bunch of specific cases for targeting behavior.
I can come up with logic for all of those things, if you're genuinely asking.
The quality of life improvement from fixing targeting for those things works be huge! I'd be so psyched!
(I know you're not genuinely asking, but it would be huge. ☺️)
No, see, that's the problem. Yes, of course targeting logic can be thought of for each of those items, which would be correct most of the time, but then the targeting system has 5+ different behaviors depending on the context and most of them make assumptions about what the player wants to target that may not align with what a particular player wants to do. This means that the player can no longer rely on the targeting system to act in a predictable manner.
But they would just be default suggestions. The player can overrode the target just like they are forced to today. Players can get used to the intelligent defaults.
For instance, having Wand of Warding target an enemy makes no sense. Having it target nothing would be preferable. Having it target the last targeted ward on the current floor would be brilliant! How would that be in any way confusing to the player? It would be wonderful. And if there is no ward on the current floor, it targets nothing.
I don't see why having 5 or so different targeting rules is going to ruin the game when those rules make more sense than the current one rule. People have been asking for a Wand of Warding fix for ages, for example. When you have players begging for a change, having you tell them the change would confuse them is... I don't even know what word to use. Maddening, for one.
Having the Bless spell target yourself by default just makes perfect sense. Players would understand that and benefit from it. Having it target an enemy by default is so egregiously bad, I'd think it was a bug.
You're programming one of the most challenging, hard to learn games there is, and you're saying your players won't understand a few exceptions to the default targeting rule? I just don't follow that logic. Especially when it comes to items like Wand of Warding and spells like Bless.
Just please consider it. Try changing a few of the more obvious items mentioned above and see how it goes. For the borderline ones, like Healing Dart, or Bomb of Regrowth, maybe you never change them, and that's OK, but I just don't understand this position of "changing certain targeting rules might be confusing" means "I can't change any of them". Please, please just consider changing the obvious ones like wards and Bless, etc.
You are seriously overestimating the player's ability to reflexively understand multiple default targeting behaviors depending on context. What I want to avoid is the player tapping an item and either having to pause to see what it is auto-targeting, or making an incorrect assumption about what was auto-targeted and firing at the wrong target. If either happens with any regularity then auto-targeting becomes pointless. That's why the behavior is extremely consistent and simple: "always auto-target the currently focused enemy", rather than trying to make decisions for the player based on context.
Obviously this isn't perfect (auto-targeting enemies for buffs being the biggest example), but in my view it's preferable to trying to decide what the player is going to want to do for them based on context.
That already happens tbh, don't worry if that's your only concern. I've targeted many more piranhas and wasted more throwables because auto-target targets the piranha instead of the enemy I'm fighting right now and let's see who's the guy that's retrieving the item cuz I am not way more times than I'd wish to recognize.
There is no context needed for Wand of Warding or Bless. Wand of Warding would always target the last targeted ward (or nothing). Bless would always default to yourself.
You never want Wand of Warding targeting an enemy. Targeting an enemy sometimes plants a ward at their feet where they immediately melee it (unless they are targeting you), but often it does nothing and wastes the charge.
It would be desirable to force the player to select a location (and perhaps actually prevent them from targeting enemies since that behavior is so inconsistent). And once a location is selected, the best next step is to target the same ward again. It's the thing you will do literally hundreds of times in Wand of Warding run, yet the game doesn't help you do that. Instead, you are forced to manually target it over and over and over, leading to mistaps and wasted charges.
That's exactly what you have do today! Bless targets an enemy with a purely beneficial spell. Wand of Warding targets an enemy and does literally nothing. You are forced to manually target these effects every single time. They auto target the wrong thing every time.
You say you don't want players reflexively making mistakes, but I started this conversation explaining how I reflexively made a mistake and casted Bless on an enemy. That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.
You don't have to change anything else. If you literally only changed Bless and Wand of Warding, I'd be happy, and so would every other player. You can't tell me that would confuse players or cause them to make reflexive mistakes. (They are not meant to target enemies!) Maybe it turns out that those are the only two spells or items that can be easily changed. That'd be fine. The game would be much better even with just those two changes.
If Evan added this I'd unironically rate the WoW higher
It'd be such a good quality of life improvement!
The items are the context. The point is that I don't want targeting behavior that changes and adopts one of several different behaviors depending on what item is used. I would rather have extremely simple targeting behavior that is correct in as many cases as possible and does not make circumstantial assumptions as to what the player wants (e.g. based on what item they're using). There is no way to add targeting behavior for these items/effects without making the logic far too complex, so instead it uses the same behavior as normal. The only alternative I would consider is turning off targeting entirely in these cases, but interaction-wise that pretty similar to leaving things as-is.
Jst add a button to toggle "smart targeting" on and off. Leave the current as default and make other 2 states: off entirely (doesn't even target) and smart targeting, it adds these QoL targets that CrayonRosary mentioned and I am too lazy to repeat (it's not laziness, it's just 8am and I am still awake, did not go to sleep yet) I think that'd make everyone happy and It'd be a nice QoL
Fair enough.
Thank you for continuing to update one of my favorite games. The priest so far has been a lot of fun to play!
Have a Merry Christmas!
You might just need to add helpful, aggressive and support, for targeting yourself, enemies and allies respectiveley!