Reverse Rune Lock Vaults

[dpeg]

It'd be pretty funny if entering Spider took away all the polearms and javelins in Shoals
Funny in the sense that Shoals would be rather a lot easier if all the merfolk had their gear taken away.

Oh, a misunderstanding. I meant all the floor loot. The idea is to punish the player.

The inherent problem lies in asking players to complete multiple branches of the same difficulty. You could up the difficulty in the second branch entered, but at that point you're really just inventing a different branch. The difficulty balance and design of the S-branches is already screwy, doubling their number is likely to exacerbate these problems. Here are potential solutions: 1) Generate only 1 S-branch per game, 2) Only require players to complete one S-branch per game, 3) Drop the pretense of making the S-branches equal in difficulty, and design two of them to be harder and completed after the first two. Rune locks really aren't the problem.

Solid analysis. One of these might be the simplest and most sane solution, indeed.

[tasonir]

It's never really bothered me that there's two lair subbranches. It's rare for a character to be absolutely equally suited for the two that generated, so picking the easier one first and then doing the second one already is a difficulty increase. You can argue it's a small one, and that may be true, but I still think it's significant. A "reverse" rune lock is how I normally play those branches, so it wouldn't have terribly much impact on me. I just find it too annoying to backtrack several times, so it would take something rather unexpected before I'd back out of a branch. I'm sure it's happened sometime, just not often. IMHO S-branch endings aren't terribly more difficult than the branches themselves; it's a bump up, but it is not a large gap like it is with vaults:5. What might end up being a bigger problem is blocking stair dancing out of S-branch:1, in case you were getting swarmed near the entrance.

I'd be against a reverse rune lock on Vaults because the gap there, imho, is very large. I usually fit both depths and elf in between V:4 and V:5.

[MainiacJoe]

Drop the pretense of making the S-branches equal in difficulty, and design two of them to be harder and completed after the first two. Rune locks really aren't the problem.

I like this plan also. I think that Spider and Swamp should be the easy branches, and Snake and Shoals would be the harder ones. All it would take is a few new types of nagas.

[tabstorm]

Drop the pretense of making the S-branches equal in difficulty, and design two of them to be harder and completed after the first two. Rune locks really aren't the problem.

We already have that though, Swamp is much easier than Spider and much much easier than Shoals or Snake.

[archaeo]

I'd still like to see an experimental branch with five Lair levels, three levels each for the S-branches, three/two Orc levels, and two Elf levels (put HoB on Elf:1). Cutting seven levels out of the middle of the game seems like a solid way to make XP tighter across the whole of it, and that's what this really all comes down to: once you get to Lair, there's so much XP available that players aren't even doing the Hypothetically Optimal thing that lobster trap would solve.

A big cut like this wouldn't do much to solve branch hopping, but I still contend that branches are a feature, not a bug, and that most of the problems we're discussing here have a lot more to do with an overabundance of XP than with players' ability to seek out safer avenues forward.

[tabstorm]

Even if you are going to make the game quasi-linear (in that there is a more-or-less clear order in which to do the branches, and deviating from that will make you underleveled and more likely to die) people are still going to hop branches for XP if they are very concerned about win rate. If you want to preserve difficulty in ends I cannot see any way around accepting this and designing the ends to be done after branch-hopping, or just instituting even more branch locks to make the player do the branches in the order you want to prevent them from getting too much XP. Cutting XP without locking more branches will just encourage the branch-hopping even more, I think.

If you wanted to do a multi-lock thing to enforce branch order more, you could do something like this:

Easy S branches: Swamp, Spider (one of them spawns) starts unlocked. You could even spawn both and make the entry to one disappear when you enter the other. I would actually like this sort of thing because I am tired of the frustration of doing Poison branches (Snake, Spider, and de facto Swamp) without rPois. Resting all the time to heal off 50 HP of poison every fight: Not that fun.
Hard S branches: Shoals, Snake. Once you have retreived the easy S rune, you can go for the hard S rune. Same as above with spawns.
Two S runes unlocks Vaults, Slime, and Elf.
Depths and Crypt/Tomb require the Silver rune to be unlocked.
Pan/Hell are never locked.

But then you don't really have that much of a branch structure at all, just a quasilinear game with no choices until after 2 S runes really. Preserving the "specialness" of the S rune branch ends appears to be a high priority, so maybe this is fine.

[tabstorm]

I'll point to Brogue (for lack of having played Rogue) as a completely linear game; there are no branches at all, just one dungeon. The inability to branch away from threats creates a lot of tension and excitement. Granted, Brogue is shorter than Crawl, but it is not *that* short.

I'd argue that the reason Brogue works well as a linear game is precisely because it's a shorter game. Crawl's length necessitates a little downtime, imo; one of the advantages of having branching content that "opens up" after you hit Lair is that the actually difficult slog of D:1 to Lair:1 recedes a bit. You've spent a dozen hard levels establishing your character, and now the game lets you spend time actually getting acquainted with that character. That works for me, from a pacing and game feel perspective, though the "downtime" goes on a bit too long.

I think the tension in Brogue has more to do with

1. No experience (most important)
2. More monsters that are unkillable for many players on first encounter and must be avoided
3. 1 staircase per level
4. Relatively tight food clock preventing e.g. kite every monster back to the paralysis trap and throw a dart

Than the length of the game. For me, a win in both games takes around 2-3 hours, except Crawl is mostly mindless whereas Brogue is mostly trying to remember to hit 's' often enough and hoping I get items that will lead to a winnable game. I don't think Brogue's tactics are super-deep, honestly. Most monsters seem to fall into "easy" or "unkillable" with little in-between. I think enchant strategy (don't enchant items that are bad, most items are bad) is much more important.

[Siegurt]

A "carrot" suggestion:

All runes give some benefit that makes completing a different rune branch easier, which it is difficult or impossible to otherwise get. (That would require some rebalancing to remover power creep and keep the branches challenging.)

I have some more detailed ideas on that front, I will make a separate thread for it when I have time.

[Bart]

I expect that most of the time we won't notice the change at all - correct me if I'm wrong, but I presume that most visits to a lair-branch end with getting a rune without leaving. The remaining cases have a good chance to transform into unavoidable deaths for a dubious benefit of creating interesting situations. I am afraid that people with limited play experience cannot easily tell a difference between unavoidable death and death by stupidity, but believe me - the former is seriously discouraging from playing again. It is hard to justify unpreventable death as a part of "good design" the later it happens and mid-game is late enough to say "fuck it, I won't keep up with this bullshit".

Increasing the number of dangerous situations by disallowing escaping is a dangerous tendency. It stands against principles of non-linearity and freedom of choice. Eventually, I am afraid that while the impact of reverse rune lock would be small, it could be another step (after vaults runelock) on a way to transform Crawl into something ugly and uninteresting. If someone is convinced to enter the vaults before lair branches, he is more likely to meet more challenging and thrilling situations than if he follows the usual route. The fact that lair branches become trivial at lvl 20+ might be actually perceived as a reward for more risky behavior beforehand.

A carrot at the end of branch - whatever the carrot would be - seems a much better idea than a stick, although I know that balancing a carrot would require significant amount of work. (By the way, I like how Elven halls are a nice carrot - they combine high risk with potentially great rewards.) Another approach (more acceptable than locks) would be to severely limit item spawn in places with too low danger level, although it's probably even more difficult, especially that items would have to be generated on tile-discover, not by entering level.

I am also really curious whether an approach with portal-like branches wouldn't be the most elegant and simple solution. Was such an option seriously evaluated? What would be the main disadvantages?

[Wahaha]

Given the abundance of teleport scrolls and other consumables in the mid-game, I have trouble imagining what an unavoidable death would look like. New players do often waste consumables due to poor decisions and may end up with few consumables in the mid-game. But that would not be unavoidable nor should it be catered to in my opinion. Have to mention again that I'm indifferent about locks, so that this post doesn't look as support for it.

[dpeg]

I'll point to Brogue (for lack of having played Rogue) as a completely linear game; there are no branches at all, just one dungeon. The inability to branch away from threats creates a lot of tension and excitement. Granted, Brogue is shorter than Crawl, but it is not *that* short.

I think the tension in Brogue has more to do with

1. No experience (most important)
2. More monsters that are unkillable for many players on first encounter and must be avoided
3. 1 staircase per level
4. Relatively tight food clock preventing e.g. kite every monster back to the paralysis trap and throw a dart

Than the length of the game. For me, a win in both games takes around 2-3 hours, except Crawl is mostly mindless whereas Brogue is mostly trying to remember to hit 's' often enough and hoping I get items that will lead to a winnable game. I don't think Brogue's tactics are super-deep, honestly. Most monsters seem to fall into "easy" or "unkillable" with little in-between. I think enchant strategy (don't enchant items that are bad, most items are bad) is much more important.

This is a bit on the sideline, but I want to dispute your 1., because you put "most important" next to it. In my opinion, Brogue had the same amount of tension back when there was experience. (No xp improved the game a lot, no question, but it didn't ramp up tension -- in fact, it made it obvious and easier to not-kill monsters, thus enabling more builds.) Agree with the others.

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I expect that most of the time we won't notice the change at all - correct me if I'm wrong, but I presume that most visits to a lair-branch end with getting a rune without leaving.

It would be interesting to get numbers on this. Can Sequell do that?

The remaining cases have a good chance to transform into unavoidable deaths for a dubious benefit of creating interesting situations.

You are a better player than I am, but are you sure that forcing you to do Swamp, say, in a single run will do that? (I stated my objections to lobster-lock elsewhere; this is only about your opinion.) Take into account that players will play with the new rule in mind. That includes, possibly cumbersome, very conscientious inventory packing and trying to eke out as much as easy xp into their crucial skills as they can. So it might lead to some none-fun before a more interesting branch run, but I don't believe it will lead to many unavoidable deaths.

I am afraid that people with limited play experience cannot easily tell a difference between unavoidable death and death by stupidity, but believe me - the former is seriously discouraging from playing again. It is hard to justify unpreventable death as a part of "good design" the later it happens and mid-game is late enough to say "fuck it, I won't keep up with this bullshit".

There are the (even if hyperbolic) cliches "won after Lair" and "Crawl 100% streakable". I wouldn't know that the first rune is the ideal place to address these, but if we want to do it, then we have to accept some deaths, right?
I wrote the paragraph about "the possibility of unavoidable deaths in computer games" in the Crawl manual philosophy section. And I still stand by it. From what you write: do you disagree with the statement outright, which means that five years of reasonably winnable Crawl have led to good players expecting that as a feature (which makes sense)?

Increasing the number of dangerous situations by disallowing escaping is a dangerous tendency. It stands against principles of non-linearity and freedom of choice. Eventually, I am afraid that while the impact of reverse rune lock would be small, it could be another step (after vaults runelock) on a way to transform Crawl into something ugly and uninteresting. If someone is convinced to enter the vaults before lair branches, he is more likely to meet more challenging and thrilling situations than if he follows the usual route. The fact that lair branches become trivial at lvl 20+ might be actually perceived as a reward for more risky behavior beforehand.

I don't understand the principles. It should be clear that if any games hands out too many escaping devices (whether they're items or branches or god powers etc.), the challenge goes out of the window. So there should be some balance, where players can make mistakes by both under- and over-using escaping.

A carrot at the end of branch - whatever the carrot would be - seems a much better idea than a stick, although I know that balancing a carrot would require significant amount of work. (By the way, I like how Elven halls are a nice carrot - they combine high risk with potentially great rewards.) Another approach (more acceptable than locks) would be to severely limit item spawn in places with too low danger level, although it's probably even more difficult, especially that items would have to be generated on tile-discover, not by entering level.

I am also really curious whether an approach with portal-like branches wouldn't be the most elegant and simple solution. Was such an option seriously evaluated? What would be the main disadvantages?

When we started doing the portal vaults seriously, I had the feeling that a whole game could be designed on that idea (lots of content only accessible through timed, one-off portal vaults). But no, that was never discussed: I guess everyone who had the idea thought it'd be a too radical departure for Crawl. It'd be very interesting to see this in a fork.
Thanks for bringing up Elf. I've been asking for working carrots for a long time. And indeed, for my games, it is: I quite often do Elf because I think the danger is controllable and I really want the loot/xp before going elsewhere.

[Bart]

I do not know if sequel can help. I don't feel a very representative player, but I checked my 15 last winning games I finished lair branches in one go 13 out of 15 times. In remaining two games I am sure (as far as I can be) that I would die if I had to finish the branch. I can't tell if different branch order would save these characters.

Take into account that players will play with the new rule in mind. That includes, possibly cumbersome, very conscientious inventory packing and trying to eke out as much as easy xp into their crucial skills as they can.

Seems like a significant downside. Without lock you can "preview" the branch and see how it goes. I am also not sure if lock wouldn't encourage especially fresh players to overprepare before an expedition.

From what you write: do you disagree with the statement outright, which means that five years of reasonably winnable Crawl have led to good players expecting that as a feature (which makes sense)?

Unfair deaths in early game are necessary to keep interesting variability there. Crawl also does good job at serving non-trivial situations later on. I am far from post-lair 100% win rate, yet rarely I can blame RNG only (actually maybe in 5% of games, I think). Furthermore, I do not mind madness of extended game, as it is optional. That said, deaths in a branch I would be forced to do fall into a new, unpleasant category; I still hope we don't need that category.

It should be clear that if any games hands out too many escaping devices (whether they're items or branches or god powers etc.), the challenge goes out of the window. So there should be some balance, where players can make mistakes by both under- and over-using escaping.

That's also a valid way to look at it. What I tried to state is that alternative paths are not only escape options, but also ways to escape boredom of repetition. I really loved my game where I did depths before lair and I would also love a (somewhat easier) challenge of vaults before lair.

(...) It'd be very interesting to see this in a fork.

If only there were any forks kept updated! I'd like to test it.