Cut Lair to 4 levels, make a new Lair-difficulty branch

[Lasty]

So, I've been thinking recently that while I like Lair a lot, eight levels of basically the same threats is a bit much. I think it could stand to be reduced to 4 levels with difficulty approximately the same as L1, L3, L6, and L8. However, I think the amount of XP contained in Lair is good -- as it stands, if you can get to Lair and clear the first level reasonably well, you can probably use the remaining XP in Lair to round out your character nicely, and start to branch into new skills, and I think that's a good thing.

So, what that calls for (the way I see it) is a new branch that's approximately as difficult as the Lair, about 4 levels long, but different. Ideally the new branch would not introduce new monsters, or at the very least not many -- there are already a lot of interesting early game monsters, and there's already a lot of monster inflation, at least according to some. Given that these branches will try to avoid introducing new monsters, I'd like to see them do interesting things with terrain and structure or (worse) branch-specific gimmicks.

So, I have a few ideas I'd like to throw out and see if they spark anything before I get around to proposing a serious thread in GDD. I've put these in approximate order of how good an idea I think they are -- the ones that are less good ideas I'm pitching not because I think they're necessarily good as-is, but rather in the hopes that it'll spark something interesting from someone else.

The Chasm
Layout is mostly in the form of hallways between 2 and 7 tiles wide. The wider hallways have the middle formed largely from open air tiles. Players cannot be trampled into open air tiles. Players voluntarily stepping into open air tiles are shafted one level. There are also down hatches, but no up/down staircases. The top and bottom levels each contain a branch exit stair. Shallow water "streams" run between walls and some open air tiles, giving the sense of water running into the chasm below. Terrain features a higher-than-normal chance of generating triangular open spaces and 2x2 pillars, sometimes with one of the corners removed. Upon entering, the player receives a warning that it may be difficult to return once they go deeper.

Monsters should be a mix of bands, ranged threats, and some single melee threats. Example monster lists might include snakes, bands of ants, gnoll and orc bands with priests and slings or nets, hippogriffs and griffons, drakes (possibly including wind drakes as high-end threats), trapdoor spiders, kobold bands, bats, stalkers, jellies, centaurs, and manticores as high-end threats. Possibly vanilla nagas as well.

The bottom level may include pools of water and the branch opening to the water Lair branch. Slime could be here or in Lair.

The Caverns
8 level layout involving sharp, triangular terrain, with a few 2x2 pillars as above. It is contains a mix of single targets of varying power, fast monsters, and groups of monsters that may be backed by slow/statue-type monsters that could limit the number of "safe" paths through the area. Each level is relatively small, between 1/2 and 1/3 of a normal level size. Levels are joined by down-hatches, with branch exits on the 1st, 5th, and 8th levels. Upon entering, the player receives a warning that it may be difficult to return once they go deeper. The entrances to either Lair branch may be placed here, along with a random chance of the Slime branch entrance.

The Subterranean Forest
Terrain and enemies TBD; enemies will probably include a higher proportion of melee brutes than normal. Level generation places a number of fog generators around, such that visibility is shifting but frequently poor.

The Halls of Dread
Terrain features and monster set not yet considered. Inside the Halls of Dread, each time a monster notices the player, the player suffers a penalty. Possible penalties include -1 to AC/EV until monsters are not actively tracking the player, small but irresistible damage, and suchlike.

[moocowmoocow]

I agree, Lair is awesome but 8 levels is long. I wouldn't mind seeing a rework of the Hive, or something similar with an ant's nest, although with Spider now that may exceed the quota of insect branches.

[tedric]

+1 for the Chasm

I like the idea of an early branch that is mostly accessible through a one-way trip, but individual levels can be repeated (unlike Zig/Pan) without terrain shifting between visits (unlike Abyss). It opens up some interesting possibilities for parts of the terrain to be accessible only from above unless you have flight, so it might take several trips down to the bottom by different paths before you'd explored it all. I would especially like it if each level of Chasm followed more-or-less the same floor plan (overall structure randomized each game), with minor variations and vaults on each level, and lower levels getting generally narrower down to a deep-water river at the bottom. Though maybe some escape hatches would be in order so that you at least have a chance of upwards retreat.

Making the monster set feel distinct from the mid levels of the main dungeon sounds like a challenge. The thematic vision I'm getting is of a rocky, desert canyon full of animals and tribes that hunt them -- so I'd weight the humanoid bands heavily towards gnolls and kobolds, toss in ravens and wasps and bees with the animals you mentioned, and probably avoid jellies and orcs which are plentiful in the main dungeon and have branches of their own.

[TeshiAlair]

Yeah Chasm sounds really cool. I'd have the Slime Pits and the Poison subbranch be in here, and the Wet subbranch be in Lair.

Might actually cool to have the Orc entrance be in Lair as well.

[duvessa]

More branches is very much the opposite of what Crawl needs, in my opinion. There are already so many branches that after finding Hells, the 'G' command stops working properly!
I also don't find Lair a very good branch, there are only 3 really interesting monsters (black mamba, weaker black mamba, blink frog), but I don't like the idea of branches in general for that reason. And it's still better than the S branches each having 0 through 2 interesting monsters, so those should be shortened/removed first, which I definitely think should be done regardless of what happens to Lair.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

I think the only real reason to have Lair at this point is "big sack of XP to get ready for rune-collecting", and that therefore the only factor in determining it's length is "how much XP should players have prior to rune-collecting?"

Also I think "change half of Lair and give it a different name" is incredibly stupid when you could just invest the same energy into improving Lair. On the other hand that is exactly what Depths is so I guess the devs disagree with me.

[KoboldLord]

I think the only real reason to have Lair at this point is "big sack of XP to get ready for rune-collecting", and that therefore the only factor in determining it's length is "how much XP should players have prior to rune-collecting?"

Also I think "change half of Lair and give it a different name" is incredibly stupid when you could just invest the same energy into improving Lair. On the other hand that is exactly what Depths is so I guess the devs disagree with me.

Sometimes, when you improve something enough, it needs a new name. Depths is an improvement over what was there before, but it's also sufficiently different than what was there before that it is actually useful to have an explicit in-game sign that the environment has changed.

Giving half of Lair a different name does not, in fact, take all that many development resources that could be used elsewhere. Improving Lair is likely going to require replacing some of the dumb animals with things that are not dumb animals, so in that case it will probably be a good idea to change the name.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Depths is an improvement over what was there before

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

The rest of your argument is "it's impossible to change something without also changing the name" which does not even warrant a response.

[zardo]

being cut to five levels already makes depths better than d:16-27

[TheDefiniteArticle]

no because those 5 levels take longer to play safely than the 11 levels they replace

[Patashu]

no because those 5 levels take longer to play safely than the 11 levels they replace

If you want a game that can be played safely very fast there's always Dungeons of Dredmor!

[KoboldLord]

no because those 5 levels take longer to play safely than the 11 levels they replace

If you don't like to spend time actually playing the game, there's a really obvious solution that will fix your problem immediately with no devteam resources required.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Okay since you're just gonna snark away and ignore my point I'll just ignore you and keep talking.

Instead of being a fun little pre-zot victory lap that doesn't matter, it is now an awful tedious slog that still doesn't matter because if you can even survive it then you are already strong enough to do zot. I would rather go directly from d15 to zot than have depths continue existing (for seemingly no reason other than to pad out the game, or maybe force me to fight monsters from optional branches even though those monsters are the reason I don't go to the optional branches). Or better yet just put the Orb in V6 since AFAICT the intention is for V5 to be harder than Z4.

And to segue from there back to the thread topic, I would rather just remove Lair entirely than ruin another branch by trying way too hard to make things interesting (lol newsiren and newcurseskull still exist, wtfmate ). Also LOL at putting orcs in Lair. Isn't 146 orcs killed in one game enough for you people? If you want a random mish-mash of different monster types, you're actually saying "D isn't long enough". Which leads us beautifully back to how Depths is awful.

[Sandman25]

I agree that Depths 5 is not usually harder than Zot 1 but another possible solution is to make Zot 2-4 harder, there is a big step in difficulty between Zot 4 and Zot 5 though that's a common pattern for branch ends. Zot1 can be hard sometimes when many monsters are generated near upstairs.

[duvessa]

zot is a pretty awful point of comparison for just about anything...

edit: also 99% of the annoyance in depths stems from bad vaults, deep troll earth magi/shamans, and spriggans, if you added those to d:16-27 it would be even worse than depths is now

[TheDefiniteArticle]

zot 1-4 is easier than depths 1 excepting that one vault that generates a bunch of orbs of fire

also is the "U1 harder than U5" thing ever going to be fixed (i assume not)

[tedric]

Sometimes I honestly can't tell if people like TheDefiniteArticle and duvessa are acting contrarian just to be contrarian, or are actual Crawl Conservatives who are truly offended by proposals that cross some individualized threshold of 'significant' change.

What is the functional difference between "Change half of Lair, add a new branch" and "Improve Lair"? I don't see one. The former is a subset of the latter. There may be other ways to improve Lair, or Lair may not need improvement -- but shortening it and adding something new is not de facto a bad idea. But since contrarians will no doubt bluntly assert that it is too, I'll ignore them and keep talking.

Lasty's post grabbed me because I've come to like the trend of shortening and diversifying branches that's been happening over several versions. When Hive was cut, I was upset at first -- then realized that it made space for a branch like Spider, which has greater diversity of enemies and presents more interesting challenges while keeping the basic "rPois will help a lot against these fast swarmy enemies" gimmick. I'm happy to see more of that kind of change.

That said, some of the Lair branches still feel a bit same-y and grind-y most times I play them. I think there's room for improvement in terms of weighting the monster list so that there's a more distinct sense of lower floors getting progressively more dangerous; in Spider for instance I usually feel like floors 1-4 are throwing more or less the same mix of enemies at me over and over again, and then there's a big difficulty leap in the rune chamber. Lair feels a little more balanced that way, but can still be same-y and grind-y when you're slogging through the 7th floor with an enemy set that has seen only a few additions since the entrance. I think a big reason for this is the lack of humanoids in both those branches, who have more potential for interesting combinations of abilities/equipment/etc. and more challenging AI behavior.

So I think it would be great to see some of that sameness alleviated with a branch like Lasty's Chasm idea that takes a thematic combination of Lair animals and Dungeon humanoids and puts them in terrain that's not quite like anything else in the game.

[duvessa]

What is the functional difference between "Change half of Lair, add a new branch" and "Improve Lair"?

one involves adding a new branch for no reason and the other one doesn't

Adding a new branch isn't a trivial cost. It clutters up G and ^o, it adds another monster spawn/level generator/vault list for unspoiled players to learn, and it detracts from the elegance of the game in general. If a branch is bad, surely the solution to that isn't to add a new branch and keep the bad branch in the game! That's like trying to cure cancer by getting your tongue pierced.

[KoboldLord]

Adding a new branch isn't a trivial cost. It clutters up G and ^o, it adds another monster spawn/level generator/vault list for unspoiled players to learn, and it detracts from the elegance of the game in general. If a branch is bad, surely the solution to that isn't to add a new branch and keep the bad branch in the game! That's like trying to cure cancer by getting your tongue pierced.

That really depends on what problem is making the branch 'bad'. The descriptor 'bad' alone doesn't supply much detail. If the problem is just that the 'bad' branch's gimmick wears out its welcome after eight levels, maybe that gimmick is better off with only four. Or maybe there's no way to make endless waves of elephants interesting, in which case the removal process can always be finished later. But for now, it might be a good idea to see if moderation might possibly be a good idea.

I think there's plenty of room for another monster spawn category for unspoiled players to learn so long as the spawn list is sufficiently good. Were it eventually determined to be an inherent problem to expect new players to learn different kinds of monsters, we can always revert to that one bugged version a while back that replaced all monster spawns throughout the entire game with ice beasts. At the time, I think it was generally agreed that having more monsters was well-worth the costs.

[bcadren]

The chasm is my 'heavens' suggestion in reverse, minus the enemies being able to intentionally knock you down the holes isn't it?

Anyways, yea I'm for this. There's nothing wrong with the lair except it does feel a bit too long, a new branch of similar difficulty could be cool. Honestly with the Chasm though, the whole 'easy to get to the bottom, hard to come back out schtick makes the idea of a mini-Orbrun appealing. Bottom of the chasm has a runed door or RUNE; soon as you pick it up there's an earth quake, the terrain becomes even harder to navigate and harder enemies spawn. (that would be like Lair difficulty on the way down, Spider or Elf difficulty on the way up.) Just a thought.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

wears out its welcome

If you don't like to spend time actually playing Lair, there's a really obvious solution that will fix your problem immediately with no devteam resources required.

replaced all monster spawns throughout the entire game with ice beasts

Yes, and when that doesn't work we can revert back to your plan of removing levels entirely and just having 100 different branches that consist of 1 map each. With orc packs spawning in every single one "for variety".

[Magipi]

Why Lair? There are a lot of branches that need some improvement much more than Lair: Depths, Vaults, Crypt, Abyss. Not to mention the Hall of Blades. (It is quite possible that the devs replaced the HoB with an empty 1x1 room months ago - but nobody noticed, because nobody ever goes there).

[zardo]

I still disagree about depths - it at least feels quicker than the bottom of dungeon used to - that was a slog

the biggest thing wrong with it is spriggans, probably. incidentally I think spriggan berserker would almost be a good monster on its own except that ev enemies are inherently kind of annoying. of course the pack nature of spriggans has a lot to why they're such a pain in general right now, other than the obvious hexes

I've said it before but I'll say it again - I really like the new deep troll packs

[Lasty]

If G screen clutter is an issue, we wouldn't lose much by subtracting all the individual hells from it, and that would free up room for additional branches. Honestly, I'm surprised you even read the G screen at this point -- I'd have thought you would have memorized it by now.

The O screen is another matter, but I'm pretty sure it could be added to without significant bloat.

I'm a little disappointed that so much of the discussion is "we need fewer branches because there are too many" and "Lair is a bad branch" and so little is about whether the branch would be interesting/fun to play. Surely if Lair is a bad branch, we should talk about what would be better, and this is my attempt to get that ball rolling. Note: I don't think Lair is bad, just that there's too much of it.

As for there being too many orcs, fair enough, but replacing them with another sentient humanoid isn't a solution. If too many orcs is a problem, we need more types of monsters; but people complain about adding new monsters, so maybe we should instead try to get better use out of the ones we already have. That's what I'm trying to do by suggesting different uses for orcs within this branch: give them light ranged weapons and band them with priests, but leave wizards and warriors out, while placing them in a different sort of terrain than you normally fight them in.

The ideas I'm putting forward may well be bad ones that would not add to Crawl, but I get the sense that most of the feedback is based on a more generalized discontent with crawl design than a specific reaction to these ideas.

Edit:
Put another way: here are the current discussion topics in this thread:
1) The monster set chosen here isn't different enough from D.
2) There are too many orcs in the game.
3) Adding branches is bad.
4) Some existing branches aren't good.
5) Lair isn't good.
6) Stuff about Depths.

Here are some topics that haven't really been discussed:
7) An early branch w/ forced diving.
8) open-air tiles.
9) the proposed level layouts.
10) whether the proposed branch features add up to a fun crawl experience.

1) is clearly on topic, and I'd love to discuss it, and 2) might be relevant to 1), but is only addressing a very small aspect of 1). 3) is also relevant to a certain extent, in that if it is true that no branches should ever be added, this also should not be added, but I think it really deserves its own thread.

4)-6) are completely off-topic and irrelevant, and have absolutely no place in this thread. Please start a second thread to discuss those questions.

I'd welcome any discussion of 7) through 10).

[tedric]

Adding a new branch isn't a trivial cost. It clutters up G and ^o, it adds another monster spawn/level generator/vault list for unspoiled players to learn, and it detracts from the elegance of the game in general.

These sound like trivial costs to me.

Screen layouts: Not a huge deal compared with things that make the actual game more/less fun.

Unspoiled players: I think you mean "inexperienced" players, and Lasty's been pretty clear about trying to minimize the new stuff that's introduced with this proposal. All players have to learn to adapt to the particulars of each branch, but doing so doesn't necessarily mean memorizing spawn lists and studying the code for level generators and vault placement. You learn how to adapt through experience, advice/examples from better players, etc., and that's where most of the fun is, right? Unless you think you are already as good at Crawl as it is ever possible for you to be? Anyway, adding (or changing) anything to the game gives us all one more thing to learn about, but that's not automatically a bad thing.

Elegance: What is this I don't even. Maybe wear a tux or ballgown while you play?

I expected "isn't a trivial cost" to be followed by something like "Dev Team resources are more needed elsewhere at the moment, like X, for reasons" which I would agree with for many versions of X.

[TeshiAlair]

Things that are good: Variety
Things that are bad: an 8 level branch.

Solutions:
Trim the game more because god level players want to get to Zot faster
Make there be more variety.
Hell, why not do both?

Make D 12 levels. Make Chasm and Lair each 4 levels. We've added variety and removed 3 levels of mostly same-y monsters. Chasm is a very interesting concept without being hyper obnoxious (Forest).

Yes, it is dev work. But it's dev work that makes the game directly better. Devs (and at least 50% of the player base) will probably disagree.

[zardo]

variety is good if and only if it brings the overall quality of content up. I don't necessarily mind suggestions along these lines, though, as long as it isn't proposing to add a bunch of new monsters right now. and as long as it keeps the good things about the lair (like the level generation)

[duvessa]

I'm a little disappointed that so much of the discussion is "we need fewer branches because there are too many" and "Lair is a bad branch" and so little is about whether the branch would be interesting/fun to play.

Because a lot of people think that you should fix the existing branches before adding new ones. What would you rather have, Crawl with 10 good branches, or Crawl with 5 good branches and 10 bad branches?

If G screen clutter is an issue, we wouldn't lose much by subtracting all the individual hells from it, and that would free up room for additional branches. Honestly, I'm surprised you even read the G screen at this point -- I'd have thought you would have memorized it by now.

The problem isn't reading it, the problem is that it gives you a --more-- every time you use a basic interface feature.

Anyway, adding (or changing) anything to the game gives us all one more thing to learn about, but that's not automatically a bad thing.

"Clarity (playability without need for spoilers)" is one of Crawl's design goals.

[Lasty]

Because a lot of people think that you should fix the existing branches before adding new ones. What would you rather have, Crawl with 10 good branches, or Crawl with 5 good branches and 10 bad branches?

Let's say I agree with you 100%; how does that change whether or not it's worth talking about what a new, good branch might look like, particularly one that might help what some people (me, at least) see as the problem with an existing branch?

The problem isn't reading it, the problem is that it gives you a --more-- every time you use a basic interface feature.

Ah, fair enough. Maybe the solution is to transition that command to use full-screen, like the inventory screen; that would resolve the current issue as well as allowing adding more branches not to exacerbate the issue.

Anyway, adding (or changing) anything to the game gives us all one more thing to learn about, but that's not automatically a bad thing.

"Clarity (playability without need for spoilers)" is one of Crawl's design goals.

It's not clear to me why you think that branches inherently remove clarity. You have to learn new map shapes, new monster lists, new branch ordering, but which of those things is really an issue of clarity as opposed to just additional content to learn? None of them requires a spoiler.

[duvessa]

It's not clear to me why you think that branches inherently remove clarity. You have to learn new map shapes, new monster lists, new branch ordering, but which of those things is really an issue of clarity as opposed to just additional content to learn? None of them requires a spoiler.

Nothing requires a spoiler. You can determine the melee damage formula by statistical analysis if you want. "Additional content to learn" is a problem because it takes a non-zero amount of time to learn about content, especially in an actual game since you are likely to die while doing it.

[Lasty]

From discussing briefly w/ devs, there's not much interest in trimming Lair, so this branch idea is moot until such a time as there's some other branch content that needs to be replaced. So, with that in mind, we can drop any discussion about devs devoting resources to this over other branch changes (not that I think that was ever at all likely).

[tedric]

Anyway, adding (or changing) anything to the game gives us all one more thing to learn about, but that's not automatically a bad thing.

"Clarity (playability without need for spoilers)" is one of Crawl's design goals.

That is a non-sequitur. Clarity as a design goal means that when the player encounters X for the first time, the game provides enough information that X's behavior should not be surprising (i.e. "spoilery"). In other words, clarity is about making the rules clear and letting the player figure out how to take advantage of those rules. It does not mean the player should never encounter new things, or that the number of new things they encounter over the course of a singe game or a career of games should be limited.

Also, having sufficient information to understand X does not mean you will deal with it properly. Most inexperienced players will, inevitably, still miscalculate threat levels or fail to invent effective strategies right away, even if the game gives them all the relevant information about the rules. Experience is the only solution to that, and you get experience by replaying the game and encountering X multiple times. Learning about something =/= that thing requiring "spoilery" info.

The design goals explicitly reference this in the section on Clarity:

The joy of dealing with ever-changing, unexpected and challenging strategic and tactical situations that arise out of transparent rules...is nice again and again.

[duvessa]

branch/monster designs don't arise out of transparent rules...by your logic, adding monsters has no drawback

[KoboldLord]

Here are some topics that haven't really been discussed:
7) An early branch w/ forced diving.

Early game portal vaults are probably better for that purpose than the proposed system of self-shafting. You can bail when you want, but you give up whatever else is in the portal vault by doing so.

In the proposed system, you can attempt to 'bail' whenever you want, but it will fairly reliably put you into a worse situation, and if you run into a nasty unique you can't withdraw and try one of the other early-game branches for a bit. You have to drop into whatever sadistic end vault lurks at the bottom of the chasm. Since this would be suicidal, nobody would probably risk entering Chasm until everything that could possibly happen was already trivial.

8) open-air tiles

I don't think that open-air tiles are sufficiently distinct from deep water or lava tiles, at least according to this proposal so far. They're tiles that you can't walk through without flight, but some monsters can still pass through and all monsters can shoot through. We already have occasional Lair levels that are cut by a 'river' of deep water, so it doesn't seem useful to have a new branch that is always a 'river' of open-air tiles and is never different. Wouldn't be a problem to have more Lair levels that have a big 'river' structure, whether it's made out of water or whatever, but I don't think it would carry a whole branch all by itself.

9) the proposed level layouts.

I suppose Chasm is already covered. Caverns and Sub-Forest also look totally workable as vaults or features that could randomly spawn in Lair. Making a particularly tiny level and packing it with death yaks can already happen in Lair, for instance if a cross layout happens to spawn. Sub-Forest fog generators such as you envision would probably require a serial vault, possibly with a Swamp entrance involved.

10) whether the proposed branch features add up to a fun crawl experience.

In moderation, they probably would. I don't know if I would like four levels in a row of fog generators, though, and neither a river layout nor a tiny crowded level seems distinct enough to justify a branch all to itself.

[tedric]

branch/monster designs don't arise out of transparent rules...by your logic, adding monsters has no drawback

Adding monsters is explicitly NOT part of Lasty's proposal.

Ideally the new branch would not introduce new monsters,

But for the record: By my logic, adding monsters does not violate the clarity design goal provided those monsters' abilities are sufficiently indicated in-game. Monsters obviously do arise from the rules -- which spells they know, what unique abilities they have, their movement patterns, their intelligence, their resistances, their equipment -- those are the things that distinguish one type of meat sack from another. There is a well-recognized drawback to having lots of types of meat sack who only differ in the amount of HD they have, namely that it is boring and unnecessary, and I welcome such monsters being removed/combined/diversified. But that has nothing to do with "clarity" as described.

Here is the full Philosophy > Clarity section of the manual, it is very clearly focused on mechanics and has nothing to do with how many branches/monsters/etc. there are:

Clarity

Things ought to work in an intuitive way. Crawl definitely is winnable without spoiler access. Concerning important but hidden details (i.e. facts subject to spoilers) our policy is this: the joy of discovering something spoily is nice, once. (And disappears before it can start if you feel you need to read spoilers - a legitimate feeling.) The joy of dealing with ever-changing, unexpected and challenging strategic and tactical situations that arise out of transparent rules, on the other hand, is nice again and again. That said, we believe that qualitative feedback is often better than precise numbers.

In concrete terms, we either spell out a gameplay mechanic explicitly (either in the manual, or by in-game feedback) or leave it to min-maxers if we feel that the naive approach is good enough.

Please stop using "clarity is a design goal" to argue against adding things.

[duvessa]

...You really don't think learning what 200 features do is more difficult than learning what 100 features do?

[mikee]

What are some problems that caused the Forest branch to fail?

[dck]

What I want to know is why the trapdoor spiders in the forest were "inspired to greatness" and what that did exactly, because to this day I still don't know.
Hell, I still don't know what the "consumed by bloodlust" war cry big orcs use on baby orcs does; I just assume they hit a tiny bit harder or something.

[KoboldLord]

What are some problems that caused the Forest branch to fail?

Nearly every interesting monster in there either screwed with your positioning or disabled control over your character. Fine in moderation, but in my opinion it was far too much to have them all in one place. Scattering them throughout the Lair branches was a much better use of these monsters. Other people probably disagree, and wish that the Forest monsters had just gotten expunged entirely.

I certainly do not agree with duvessa's position that new content is an inherently bad thing. It is a very odd position that must be very hard to justify.

[WalkerBoh]

Well there is definitely an inherent cost for adding any new material. 1) It takes work and debugging and testing and tweaking etc., and 2) it makes Crawl's learning curve a little steeper because it's one extra thing you have to experience to learn. Those costs are there whenever you add any new content to the game, and it is only loosely related to Crawl's design goals and game clarity, in my opinion.

So therefore, anything you add has to have enough of a benefit to offset the cost of adding that new material. With regards to Lasty's proposal, his intended improvement is to increase gameplay variety by removing redundant Lair levels and additionally create new decisions for the player in terms of branch order selection. I personally think there is a niche for another early branch (portal vaults do not quite fill this niche), but I am skeptical that it is really worth the work required - however, I honestly don't have a good idea just how much work is needed to do what he's proposing so it's just a guess.

Anyways, Lasty has requested that the discussion revolve more around whether his proposed ideas could work in a theoretical branch that replaces Lair. So that's all I'll say on this subject.

[tedric]

...You really don't think learning what 200 features do is more difficult than learning what 100 features do?

I really do think that this has nothing to do with "clarity as a design goal"

[Lasty]

In the proposed system, you can attempt to 'bail' whenever you want, but it will fairly reliably put you into a worse situation, and if you run into a nasty unique you can't withdraw and try one of the other early-game branches for a bit. You have to drop into whatever sadistic end vault lurks at the bottom of the chasm. Since this would be suicidal, nobody would probably risk entering Chasm until everything that could possibly happen was already trivial.

I disagree with your assessment that bailing would fairly reliably put you in a worse situation. If you're considering bailing, then I would guess that shafting yourself would more likely than not put you in a better situation, with the possibility of putting you in a worse situation. There would not necessarily have to be a sadistic end vault, either -- in fact, with this structure, it would make sense to have the sadistic vaults higher in the chasm. It might even make sense to stack the difficulty of the floors 1 < 4 < 3 < 2.

I don't think that open-air tiles are sufficiently distinct from deep water or lava tiles, at least according to this proposal so far. They're tiles that you can't walk through without flight, but some monsters can still pass through and all monsters can shoot through. We already have occasional Lair levels that are cut by a 'river' of deep water, so it doesn't seem useful to have a new branch that is always a 'river' of open-air tiles and is never different. Wouldn't be a problem to have more Lair levels that have a big 'river' structure, whether it's made out of water or whatever, but I don't think it would carry a whole branch all by itself.

I did consider that, and you may be right. I felt that the distinguishing feature that would make open air interesting would be giving everyone the option to self-shaft most of the time, which is a choice otherwise offered only to formicids, and even then they normally have to spend a couple turns to do it, exposing them to greater danger. Also, it's fun flavor, but that's just a perk if it happens to play well. Because of the self-shafting aspect of it, I think it would play fairly differently than just being deep water.

[TeshiAlair]

If you made it like a valley, you could have the first floor have the smallest floor area, increasing as you go down, which would make it harder to run on earlier floors.

[KoboldLord]

I disagree with your assessment that bailing would fairly reliably put you in a worse situation. If you're considering bailing, then I would guess that shafting yourself would more likely than not put you in a better situation, with the possibility of putting you in a worse situation. There would not necessarily have to be a sadistic end vault, either -- in fact, with this structure, it would make sense to have the sadistic vaults higher in the chasm. It might even make sense to stack the difficulty of the floors 1 < 4 < 3 < 2.

If entering the Chasm meant there was a chance I would be forced to pass through minmay's Frog Pond Lair ending in order to leave, I would not enter Chasm period until I was ready to be dumped into the Frog Pond Lair ending with no ready line of retreat. At that point, anything else I might find in Chasm is going to be pathetically easy.

[damiac]

Okay since you're just gonna snark away and ignore my point I'll just ignore you and keep talking.

HAHAHA. Ever heard of a little saying... something about calling kettles some color or something...

But, that's a good strategy for people who just snark away and ignore your point, I'll keep that in mind for our future dealings.

[Robotron]

@Devteam: and while you're at it: shorten the whole damn game by about 50% level-wise, re-calibrate exp & floor drops. Almost all of the "tediousness" discussed in other threads originates from the game just taking too long, grinding level after level after level.

[Lasty]

I disagree with your assessment that bailing would fairly reliably put you in a worse situation. If you're considering bailing, then I would guess that shafting yourself would more likely than not put you in a better situation, with the possibility of putting you in a worse situation. There would not necessarily have to be a sadistic end vault, either -- in fact, with this structure, it would make sense to have the sadistic vaults higher in the chasm. It might even make sense to stack the difficulty of the floors 1 < 4 < 3 < 2.

If entering the Chasm meant there was a chance I would be forced to pass through minmay's Frog Pond Lair ending in order to leave, I would not enter Chasm period until I was ready to be dumped into the Frog Pond Lair ending with no ready line of retreat. At that point, anything else I might find in Chasm is going to be pathetically easy.

I hear what you're saying, but I thought I addressed that in the section you quoted. There's no reason this branch would need to steal vaults from Lair, and there's no reason we would need to make the final floor the most difficult one. On the contrary, it would make sense to make the second or third floor the most difficult and the most filled with "branch end vault"-type content.

So yes, knowing that you won't have an easy exit means that you won't jump until you feel ready to handle what's on offer, but that's not necessarily bad -- and you won't necessarily be able to put it off forever if it has the rune branch that you'd prefer to do first.

[Sandman25]

@Devteam: and while you're at it: shorten the whole damn game by about 50% level-wise, re-calibrate exp & floor drops. Almost all of the "tediousness" discussed in other threads originates from the game just taking too long, grinding level after level after level.

Don't we have sprints for those impatient?
I would not like crawl cut in half, I don't like even new Crypt (3 levels is too few) despite it's my least favorite branch of normal game.

[KoboldLord]

I disagree with your assessment that bailing would fairly reliably put you in a worse situation. If you're considering bailing, then I would guess that shafting yourself would more likely than not put you in a better situation, with the possibility of putting you in a worse situation. There would not necessarily have to be a sadistic end vault, either -- in fact, with this structure, it would make sense to have the sadistic vaults higher in the chasm. It might even make sense to stack the difficulty of the floors 1 < 4 < 3 < 2.

If entering the Chasm meant there was a chance I would be forced to pass through minmay's Frog Pond Lair ending in order to leave, I would not enter Chasm period until I was ready to be dumped into the Frog Pond Lair ending with no ready line of retreat. At that point, anything else I might find in Chasm is going to be pathetically easy.

I hear what you're saying, but I thought I addressed that in the section you quoted. There's no reason this branch would need to steal vaults from Lair, and there's no reason we would need to make the final floor the most difficult one. On the contrary, it would make sense to make the second or third floor the most difficult and the most filled with "branch end vault"-type content.

So yes, knowing that you won't have an easy exit means that you won't jump until you feel ready to handle what's on offer, but that's not necessarily bad -- and you won't necessarily be able to put it off forever if it has the rune branch that you'd prefer to do first.

Maybe I'm not being clear.

No-retreat levels is a fine concept to throw at a character going through Pan because by that point in the game a character is going to have a wide variety of tools to deal with a wide variety of situations. If they don't, then they probably deserved to die anyway. If you go through a Pan portal and get dropped onto Hellion Island, no big deal you just kill them all or escape, whichever works best for your build.

We can't reasonably throw no-retreat levels at a baby character toddling through D8, because they've only had time to develop one or two tools to the level that they are no longer complete crap, and their toybox of consumables is still tiny and unreliable. If you throw them into Hellion Island, they will just die. If you throw them onto Baby Hellion Island that's been scaled down for them, they will randomly die or not die based on whether they've been lucky enough to spawn the right consumables. Their ability to run away is the saving grace that lets them carefully approach challenges that they can handle in order to prepare themselves for challenges that they can not yet handle.

If Chasm has a Frog Pond-equivalent vault on Chasm 2, I would expect a player to avoid Chasm entirely for as long as possible, and then bail out of Chasm 2 immediately on arrival. Then the player would carefully clear Chasm 3 and 4, and then tediously cycle through 3, 4, and 1 every time they wanted to do one stair-dance-equivalent on Chasm 2. If Chasm Frog Pond is easy enough to safely clear in one go immediately on arrival with a pre-Lair character, then all of Chasm is too easy and therefore boring. Assuming Chasm Frog Pond is not so easy that it becomes utterly trivial, no-retreat conduct is too harsh for that point in the game.