Early game > late game

[Berder]

I've been experimenting with recording a few games or parts of games as I play them, talking over them. This is what i noticed: there's a lot more to talk about in the early game. In the late game it's all just tabbing and doing similar things again and again, watching your hp. The early game involves many more careful tactical decisions.

What does the pre-lair game have that the later game does not?

• Item identification! That thrill of identifying your first heal wounds potion is unmatched later on.
• Fewer enemies per level. Later in the game it becomes boring to fight so many hordes of enemies because it's just the same damn thing over and over for each one.
• More dangerous enemies relative to your xl. It's more interesting to decide tactics to fight or escape from a single hard enemy or two enemies.
• More sleeping enemies. You can frequently choose not to fight - and because the enemies are so dangerous, that's frequently a good tactical decision. Later in the game, when more enemies wake up and wander, it often ends up just being you against the horde of everything in the area, which is uninteresting.
• Item finds that impact your game much more. That blowgun, that hunting sling, that hand crossbow, or that spear of venom are all usable against many of the hardest enemies, even at 0 skill.
• Greater influence of background on the game. This leads to more variety of gameplay.
• Narrow corridors. Again, this fits with the emphasis on single combat with dangerous enemies, rather than you against a horde.
• Greater variety in what capabilities different characters have. Later on everybody has flying, everybody has digging, most have ctele, etc etc. Early on it's much more randomized.

[and into]

Moved (and deleted request).

I like the early game a lot for several of the reasons you identify.

[duvessa]

Moved (and deleted request).

you shouldn't post when you do this stuff, now everyone is going to wonder what the post possibly could have said that was so bad

[Berder]

Moved (and deleted request).

you shouldn't post when you do this stuff, now everyone is going to wonder what the post possibly could have said that was so bad

The post previously said "Edit: Please move to CYC, I meant to post there."

[and into]

I leave it to everyone's imagination exactly how Berder worded his request to move the OP to the correct forum. But, let me tell you, it was marvelous. Just marvelous.

[and into]

Damn it, Berder. You just had to go and spoil the fun.

[Berder]

So sorry

[Sandman25]

If you find late game boring, you should probably play weaker characters (use my HP mod if even OpCK is too easy for you).
Another thing that makes late game boring is abundance of resists (this is why Op is not that bad usually).
MR+ in Vaults, no rElec, no rCorr, no rF+/rC+ simultaneously etc. means less tabbing and more decisions.

[all before]

I don't think Berder meant the late game is too easy but that it's less interesting. Increasing difficulty may just lead to more tedious behaviors like kiting and retreating to stairs.

On some other thread recently, I suggested that the early game is when floor drops can still change how your character will develop, the midgame is when you more or less know what stuff and skills your character needs but are trying to acquire them, and the late game is when you have what you need and the game's challenges are purely tactical.

For me, this suggests "hellifying" late branches makes sense, so that there'd be little to no floor drops, fewer garbage enemies, and more loot/xp at branch end. There might be some minor advantage still, I suppose, to fully exploring every floor, but much less of a penalty for diving to the end, where the game is still challenging and interesting.

[Sandman25]

"all just tabbing", "where the game is still challenging"

I believe it is caused by difficulty. Kiting and retreating is not easy when you have floors full of dangerous monsters (and some of them are wondering on each upper floor).

I am playing a Te (intrinsic boots of running) and I ran out of ?teleport quite early, even Spider without tele and sInv was quite fun. I even decided to ignore rune vault because it would be a suicide.

Edit. Have you never had a character who spent much time deciding where to go next because every branch was too dangerous? Those games are truly exciting

[onget]

Early game is the most boring. Always forced to use the same tactics.
(D:1 is always spam tab or lv1 spell)
(If you want to encounter the sigmund,always simply walking escape or stupid death)

No God: You do not worship God in the early game.
Even if you have worship in God, it is always useless in the early game.
(If you do not give ability, God is useless)

Stupid and boring "escape recommended" Monster: "escape recommended" monster is very common.
"Escape recommended" monster force run away to stairs, to use another of stairs,
It only makes a temporary impossible to explore area. The other choices are only stupid death.
Since the grinder and player ghost is completely invincible, it is the worst.

Very little choice: the only obvious one in the early game "survival" choice. Others are "stupid death" or "stupid consumable waste".

Example 1: When you get down to D:2, the encounter with sigmund (or other "escape recommended" monster),
You're standing on up stairs.
You do not have any items or spell or god.
It always died if you fight with sigmund.
Do you have three of not stupid "survival" choice?

Example 2: You encounter a grinder (or other "escape recommended" monster),
He is sleeping.
You do not have any items or spell or god.
It always died if you fight with grinder.
Do you have three of not stupid "survival" choice?

This example is a very common situation in the early game.
In Example 1, you have to use the stairs, you must descend from another stair. Or stupid death.
In Example 2, you exclude grinder,To run away. Or stupid death.

[Sar]

D:1 is always spam tab

I see why you don't like early game then. You die too often in it!

[bel]

I always found that difficulty spikes when I reach Depths. Hordes of enemies is nothing to sneeze at. This is also the time when I find out if my strategic (long-term) character development was a good idea or I should have done something else earlier.

Also, the rune branches can be quite challenging if you are missing some resistance or sInv etc. (and even otherwise the last floor of the lair rune branch is fairly tough).

[Sandman25]

D:1 is always spam tab

I see why you don't like early game then. You die too often in it!

I don't die on D1 often but I don't like it either. Also standard tactics which depends on background only.

[tabstorm]

Early game is boring. All you do is run away from enemies you can't kill and the dangerous ones don't do much of interest besides poison you or hit you extremely hard. Your character can't do a whole lot either: just swing with poor dam/accuracy, cast conjurations, or run. I also basically have to explore everything for XP or I'll be too weak for the next floor unless I'm a Berserker.

In theory the game should be more interesting farther in since you have god powers, more paths for character development, and more interesting enemies that can work together to provide challenges and do things besides poison to death since you don't have curing on D:2 yet. Unfortunately, mid-to-late game is too easy imo because of your character's power level relative to that of enemies. You can alleviate that by diving, I guess, but it's somehow unsatisfactory to have to, in a sense, not play the game to make the game interesting (e.g. skip large parts of floors).

[Sandman25]

I was always disappointed that we don't have "quick start" option, when you start as XL 6 character with some consumables on D4 looking for Temple.

[xentronium]

I was always disappointed that we don't have "quick start" option, when you start as XL 6 character with some consumables on D4 looking for Temple.

We do...it's called comborobin!

[duvessa]

There's always zermakorobin, might as well let anyone play it now that he's gone.

[treerex5]

I was always disappointed that we don't have "quick start" option, when you start as XL 6 character with some consumables on D4 looking for Temple.

We do...it's called comborobin!

What I love about comborobin is that I can get deeper into parts of the game I normally miss.

[Pollen_Golem]

Have you ever had a character who spent much time deciding where to go next because every branch was too dangerous? Those games are truly exciting

Erm... most of my games are like this, all the time.

[Sandman25]

Erm... most of my games are like this, all the time.

Wrong smile I guess, it should be

KoBe (especially in extended) and FeTm are not OP indeed.

[Berder]

I think difficulty is not enough to give the later game the feel of the earlier game. I think it does help. I do have more fun with octopode melee than normal race melee. However, there are other factors in the early game that the later game lacks, such as the joy of discovering game-changing items and having smaller, more meaningful fights.

I don't know if it would be feasible to give Crawl that feel for the whole game.

Here's an idea: suppose each new branch is a fresh slate! You start over at xl1 with your starting gear plus maybe a few random items you were carrying, and the difficulty of enemies is adjusted accordingly. Maybe also add a lot more experience in each branch so you can level from 1 up to 25 by the time you're at the branch end, and be casting firestorm etc. if you want. To balance that against the xl1-appropriate enemies, the effectiveness of skills and spells and the amount of hp you get on levelup could be greatly decreased.

[pickled_heretic]

late game: gigantic piles of enemies that can't really do anything dangerous as long as you aren't surrounded
early game: not that

[Sandman25]

having smaller, more meaningful fights.

Less popcorn? Early game it is possible to die in 2-5 turns from full HP to most monsters, there are almost no harmless monsters. Also late game monsters have more problems hitting or dealing damage, AC/EV increase faster than monster damage/accuracy.

[Pollen_Golem]

Make every Pan level populated by nothing other than a bunch of Pan Lords?

[Sandman25]

Some popcorn is a must IMHO, it blocks path, makes problems for stabbers, provides piety/food. Vehumet/Makhleb/TSO love fighting popcorn.

[pickled_heretic]

it's possible that there's also too much free exp available in lair. The main dungeon down to 15 and orc are usually pretty easy once you have lair cleared.

[Sandman25]

Some players enter Orc before Lair, in this case Lair is too easy. It is natural problem for game with several branches I think. I wouldn't call Lair XP free, it is not very hard to die there (especially on Lair 8).

[Kramin42]

Part of the issue is that the early game can be dangerous a bit more luck based (which makes it exciting) because you don't have much to lose. Later on the game must become easier and less luck based otherwise you would lose too many chars to unavoidable things.

Basically, if each floor was of equal difficulty, the total difficulty of achieving floor x is exponential (think in terms of probability, e.g. 10% chance to die on any given level). In order to make the game winnable while not being too short the later levels get easier to offset that exponential and make it a bit more linear.

Cutting down on game length helps with this, as some have suggested before. I think the devs are in fact doing this gradually, a lot of releases have some branches shortened. Obviously they don't want to cut out too much of the game's content though, which is interesting for newer players.

[archaeo]

Personally, I've always preferred late game to early game, if only because I find Crawl relaxing and fun to play after I've gotten past the part of the game where I can die because I somehow failed to hit an adder six times in a row or something.

Edit: to expand on that just a bit, I also just like the wide variety of options that I have to play with as the game goes on. There's a lot to be said for the very elemental gameplay you get in the D:1->Lair:1 game, but I enjoy getting to make the midgame strategic and tactical decisions. The post-Lair gameplay in Crawl often feels like the right balance between NetHack and a 7drl to me; it's not a stripped-down game of pseudo-Chess, but it's also not an elaborate puzzle box that requires me to have a wiki open to understand it.

I generally agree with the idea that the best way to extend that early game fun is to speedrun, which really does preserve a lot of the stuff that you bring up, Berder.

[Zwobot]

Chiming in, I also don't find the early game too enjoyable compared to the later parts. There's only so much positioning tango I'm willing to take, before I'd call it quits. And yeah, missing that adder/getting a smite happy orc priest/that one kobold that always rolls max damage. All that is not FUN.

If that were all that DCSS had to offer, I wouldn't stick to playing it - no matter how exciting an early blowgun/branded weapon/ring of invis is.

Now I agree that it can get tedious - even boring and easy - but that's a result of crawl's balance being pretty much all over the place. Species are a sort of difficulty slider - as are playstyles (e.g. Melee Octopode). But part of it is the sheer variety of loot you find - or don't find. :3

In any case I'd love to see those videos of yours! n1000 made a series for a MiBe - and I didn't think the late game commentary was lacking in any way in those, but I wouldn't know without being able to make a comparison~