PSA: Orc shortened

[tedric]

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/a ... 11de1026c3

  Code:

Flatten Orc to two levels, and remove plain orcs from generation there.

These two changes, in addition to a bit of padding on the monster lists,
provide a more streamlined Orc experience while keeping the average XP
total for the branch roughly the same at 16k.

Gold generation is doubled between the two levels to account for loot; this
may or may not need further tuning.

A lot of vault depths are adjusted for this; uniques that placed in
early Orc now only place on Orc:1, uniques that placed in late Orc place
on Orc:$, and most vaults that placed somewhere in Orc place anywhere in Orc
(usually meaning they'll end up on Orc:1 only because the Orc:$ ending
will take the primary vault slot).

[Sprucery]

This has to be good.

[Sphara]

My prayer has been answered.

[Sprucery]

My prayer has been answered.

Which god? I bet it wasn't Beogh.

[WalkerBoh]

Excellent change, curious to see how much difference it makes.

[WingedEspeon]

Only thing I am worried about is reducing the number of shops you can get, because orc 1-3 frequently had shops.

[BugHunter]

This also reduces the potential number of Beogh cannon fodder followers.

[bcadren]

Since I just lost in Orc. I'll append a warning; the associated increase in Warlord, High Priest and Sorcerer spawns puts orc a lot closer to S tier; being on par with Snake or so.

[Croases]

Might be a good idea to move Orc entry further down to give a clear idea that it is not a pleasant place and definitely no longer an alternative to Lair. Or was that already done?

[asdu]

And yet hells still have 7 floors each, a trip to get all 5 pan runes still takes >40 floors on average, the abyss is still the abyss, etc.
Am I really that strange for finding it completely mind boggling that nothing at all has been done towards shortening a part of the game whose lenght has always been a source of complaints, even now that other branches are being (rightfully) shrinked?
To me this is so unfathomable that an alien conspiracy and indecisivenss/lack of consensus among devs seem about equally reasonable explanations for extended still being as long as it is.

[dpeg]

asdu: Yes, you are that strange.

There is a crucial difference between mandatary content and extra (extended) content. Forget the aliens and indecisive developers and try to embrance that distinction.

[Croases]

Orc is not mandatory content no matter how you look at it.

[dpeg]

But certainly not part of the "extended endgame" either. Solve the rebus!

[bcadren]

Orc is not mandatory content no matter how you look at it.

No part of the game is "mandatory"...save D, U and Zot. You could win a game with only Hell or Pan runes...

[Croases]

Then perhaps it is erroneous to classify branches as core and optional to justify not paying attention to the latter.

Orc rework is good, though. Here's hoping that it being good will draw some more attention on other branches that could use a similar shortening, and especially to the atrocity that is the Pan rune roulette.

[dpeg]

Croases: What Is Your Point?

Abyss, Hells, Pan and ziggurats have all been getting attention very recently. You can get all worked up about my misuse of "mandatory", but your atrocity is someone else's beloved eternal endgame. For the original pan roulette experience, go back to DCSS 0.3.

[Croases]

My point is this: Extended ought to be shortened, just as Dungeon, Vaults, S-branches, Elf and now Orc have been shortened.

And yes, additional extended content is good (except Demon Hounds). I have no complaints about that.

[Zooty]

I like the shortening, but enemy spawns seem pretty nasty. I've entered Orc twice (i.e. not statistically significant number of times) and both times there's been a stone giant almost at the stairs. Seems like a quick peek into Orc before Lair is no longer an option.

[archaeo]

Maybe asdu could've stated it more tactfully, but I've always agreed that Pan, Hell, and the Abyss are too long, and I don't think it's an altogether uncommon sentiment among the players I've known. Maybe that's a vocal minority, but I tend to think few people would mourn the loss of a bunch of empty Hell floors and big swaths of infinite nothingness in Pan and Abyss.

Obviously, though, dpeg has a point; extended hasn't been ignored, and Grunt's working on an Abyss rework right now that will hopefully result in an Abyss rune run that takes a shorter average amount of time to complete (though I don't think that's his central goal, really). And the devs really do have a compelling reason to focus on the main game's content instead of extended.

But that said, if I woke up tomorrow and the devs unceremoniously cut 5 floors out of each Hell and made Pan into an unescapable set of 15 floors? dpeg's calls for incremental changes may be the wiser course of action, but I think I'd be waking up to a better game.

[WalrusKing]

Maybe asdu could've stated it more tactfully, but I've always agreed that Pan, Hell, and the Abyss are too long, and I don't think it's an altogether uncommon sentiment among the players I've known. Maybe that's a vocal minority, but I tend to think few people would mourn the loss of a bunch of empty Hell floors and big swaths of infinite nothingness in Pan and Abyss.

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18545 Let's find out

[Sar]

I like the idea of Hell being an area you dive. It probably doesn't work like that currently. Maybe if Hell effects increased in frequency and severity the longer you stay on a floor?

[archaeo]

It's funny how little has changed about these debates in four years. The game was a lot longer back then, too.

A 28-floor Hell would be a lot more tolerable if you made each floor significantly smaller.

[Turukano]

I've always agreed that Pan, Hell, and the Abyss are too long

Yesterday we saw speedrun expert 4thArra on CXC playing a DEFE of Veh. His milestones in Dis were remarkable:

  Code:

 20691 | Dis:1    | Entered Level 1 of the Iron City of Dis
[...]
 20842 | Dis:7    | Entered Level 7 of the Iron City of Dis
[...]
 20891 | Dis:7    | Got an iron rune of Zot


Well, speedrunners have their own way of playing.

[daggaz]

Yeah I don't know.. abyss is just awful and Pan is too long, but Hell I never really thought was too much. You dive and dive (and the dive mechanic is really good here what with upstairs all putting you back out), and if you end up exploring too much of the map before finding a downstair, thats what you have that stack of ?mapping for. Usually you can do this fast enough that even the hell-effects don't really wreck your day barring a few unlucky rolls with the RNG.

I think the big point is the ease of getting back out. You aren't stuck at any point, unlike Pan or Abyss.

Orc I am sad to see get pruned as much as it is. Some pruning, sure.. but I liked having it as an option and often did it before lair, either because I wanted the gold or shops, or because Lair was problematic, or simply for the challenge. Now I would agree that you might as well put it down at the bottom of D right before depths.

[MrPlanck]

I've always agreed that Pan, Hell, and the Abyss are too long

Yesterday we saw speedrun expert 4thArra on CXC playing a DEFE of Veh. His milestones in Dis were remarkable:

  Code:

 20691 | Dis:1    | Entered Level 1 of the Iron City of Dis
[...]
 20842 | Dis:7    | Entered Level 7 of the Iron City of Dis
[...]
 20891 | Dis:7    | Got an iron rune of Zot


Well, speedrunners have their own way of playing.

Ideally you will find an escape hatch on 6 and drop near rune.

[o_O]

Probly a good change overall although I'm sad there's no more quick dips into Orc if something nasty is in lair, or something great is in a shop.

[stoneychips]

And yet hells still have 7 floors each, a trip to get all 5 pan runes still takes >40 floors on average, the abyss is still the abyss, etc.
Am I really that strange for finding it completely mind boggling that nothing at all has been done towards shortening a part of the game whose lenght has always been a source of complaints, even now that other branches are being (rightfully) shrinked?
To me this is so unfathomable that an alien conspiracy and indecisivenss/lack of consensus among devs seem about equally reasonable explanations for extended still being as long as it is.

What worries me as a more intermediate player (still often struggling with the 3 runes), is it seems to make Orc more dense/difficult early on. I didn't actually mind the shortening of Lair branches much (they really had a lot of open space to cover with lots of water in some, too)... But this seems to be making a branch that was an early source of gear and experience, and a viable option for some alternative routing, much less possible for those things. So the whole game is becoming tighter and more chess-like and in short, perhaps rather more like Nethack (based on reports - I've only played that a sliver myself)? Am I wrong? That's just the feeling I'm getting. At some point, if there's no wandering - less options - less random progression and choice of paths - and it's all chess, then well one might just play chess.

[ontoclasm]

And yet hells still have 7 floors each, a trip to get all 5 pan runes still takes >40 floors on average, the abyss is still the abyss, etc.
Am I really that strange for finding it completely mind boggling that nothing at all has been done towards shortening a part of the game whose lenght has always been a source of complaints, even now that other branches are being (rightfully) shrinked?
To me this is so unfathomable that an alien conspiracy and indecisivenss/lack of consensus among devs seem about equally reasonable explanations for extended still being as long as it is.

What worries me as a more intermediate player (still often struggling with the 3 runes), is it seems to make Orc more dense/difficult early on. I didn't actually mind the shortening of Lair branches much (they really had a lot of open space to cover with lots of water in some, too)... But this seems to be making a branch that was an early source of gear and experience, and a viable option for some alternative routing, much less possible for those things. So the whole game is becoming tighter and more chess-like and in short, perhaps rather more like Nethack (based on reports - I've only played that a sliver myself)? Am I wrong? That's just the feeling I'm getting. At some point, if there's no wandering - less options - less random progression and choice of paths - and it's all chess, then well one might just play chess.

It's exactly the opposite of Nethack, actually. After a few floors Nethack splits into like a half-dozen branches, and you wander around quote-unquote "exploring them," which means grinding until you have everything IDed and a bunch of bits of your ascension kit. In particular, they often have specific, preset "challenges" like Sokoban and specific, guaranteed loot, meaning you get specific, extremely useful items for the cost of looking the solution up on the internet.

Also I dunno if you've noticed but Crawl is pretty fricking complex. So it's kind of funny how every time anything is simplified or streamlined at all, like even the tiniest little bit, people jump out of the woodwork to say "welp, now Crawl is too simple to be fun, I quit" or "next year you'll just press o once and the RNG will tell you if you won or lost!!!" Slippery slope is a terrible argument in general, and definitely doesn't apply here: we could remove 300 monsters, 20 backgrounds, 20 races, 20 gods, a hundred spells, and half the branches and Crawl would still be dozens of times more complex than most games in existence... but in fact, those things are being added constantly. Incidentally, it's ironic that you picked chess to whine about, since it's like the textbook example of simple rules giving rise to variety and complexity.

So forgive me, but yes, you're wrong.

[stoneychips]

That's fine, really. I hope I'm wrong. I haven't seriously played Nethack past a few levels, so maybe bad analogy after all.

The reason I said chess was more that I sense the game being moved toward fewer and fewer tiles of territory, so it would seem to become important to pick just the right moves for whatever happens to drop in that still more limited space. (Chess is certainly popular, but there are also certainly handbooks written with the "Few Major Strategies" that guide many expert games of it, within those very predictable confines in my defense. It isn't Crawl, right?)

I can understand the aim not to let people wander indefinitely until they have just anything, but Orc has been positioned in a very interesting place for me as it was. I rarely go there first and it's usually a challenge when I do, but it sounded like that was going to be less of an option and thus the game would become more predictable (unless something else is replacing it). And it seemed to me, on first blush yes, like if you couldn't hack Lair for some reason and couldn't hack Orc (and weren't experienced with things like Abyss or packing all the resists and bolt/aoe suggested for that?), then you'd more often end up feeling out of luck.

But I'd happily enjoy being wrong about all that.

Also, has there been an answer about what happens to all the shops that were in Orc? Will they still be there? Moved? Did I miss it somewhere?

[ichbins]

I like Orc the way it is. A little bit of regeneration in between. Plus you get gold and a fair chance of portals and shops. Plus it does not take too much time. Why change it?

[duvessa]

orc:1, orc:2, and orc:3 are only interesting if you do them before lair, and crawl's devs would rather remove levels of orc than remove lair
that's why

[bcadren]

orc:1, orc:2, and orc:3 are only interesting if you do them before lair, and crawl's devs would rather remove levels of orc than remove lair
that's why

Orc 1-3 were generally easier than lair. IMHO.

[Viashino_wizard]

That was Duvessa's point, yes.

[duvessa]

no, that was the exact opposite of my point, and both of you are nuts

orc:1-3 had orc sorcerers, stone giants, really bad terrain, and instant stair deaths out the ass. They were definitely more dangerous than lair and less rewarding as well. For an overwhelming majority of characters, there was no reason to enter Orc before finishing Lair, and by the time you finished Lair, Orc was trivial. This is still the case, but having only 2 trivial levels is better than having 4, is it not?

[bcadren]

I disagree still. I hate the 'stealth works' argument, but ONLY Sorcerers had SInv...so +Invis wrecks. Regardless, everything is weak to poison and there is A LOT of popcorn that makes it easy to control the positioning...

Also I -enjoyed- doing Orc before Lair, now it's just stupid hard to try to do that.

[duvessa]

you have invisibility before lair and your first thought is to go to orc first????

[stoneychips]

To me up until now, they have been quite different areas. A weapon of freezing or Bolt of Cold rocks in Lair with all the reptiles; you hardly see a dragon or lizard in Orc at all due to the theme. Anti-magic picks up some steam in Orc against the fairly common wizards and priests, but has only marginal assignments with uniques in Lair. Memphetic Cloud is strong in both, but less so in Orc where odds are much higher the opposition will be adjacent to you (even if you do happen to be totally immune, you often block your own LOS for tossing other things at approaching enemies). Summons are more flexible in Lair with larger floors and sometimes more wide open space, but in Orc you can again box yourself in easily. Orc has lots of action inside rooms and even small halls, which Lair generally lacks. Generally, Orc tests you against being surrounded and also trying to find a way to avoid or snap up the smiting/invisible opponents (numerous priests, wizards) while Lair gives you more opportunity to carve apart herds or pick one on one fights against heavier armor or stuff with nasty speed/agility (yaks and elephants yes, but also spiny frogs/komodo dragons/snakes).

Depending on your background, build and gear drops and what exactly you met by an entrance or at the bottom of Lair etc., one or the other of Lair/Orc would often make more sense to dive into. Very often it was at least start in Lair for me too -- but not always, and there have been plenty of times (me as a less-than-uber player) where it was very interesting to take a character that was struggling in Lair and see whether they could better make it through part of Orc first (often also at great risk and struggle). What strikes me is that there have been times when I would make the switch at all sorts of different points - it could be the Lair entrance with something really nasty just inside, around mid-Lair, before a certain whalloping lower level, or even just before the vaults on Lair 8.

While the plainer Orcs are often squishy for any good melee character or the basic spells of an average caster, there are a zillion of them and (often but not always, when combined with their more impressive leaders/odd minions) you have to approach gradually and keep track of your resources and know when to hide or use the stairs. That can be work sure, but then such happens all over the game anyway. The part of each level that you can see is often limited unless you've pulled mapping and/or digging, so like Labyrinth there is a bit of puzzle to it (though less than Lab, arguably).

Not a lot has really been said, that I've seen at least so far, about exactly what will change (I've been happy/busy playing 0.17 myself)... But I'm wondering how much of all that will go away or what might replace it.

[dpeg]

we could remove 300 monsters, 20 backgrounds, 20 races, 20 gods, a hundred spells, and half the branches and Crawl would still be dozens of times more complex than most games in existence... but in fact, those things are being added constantly. Incidentally, it's ironic that you picked chess to whine about, since it's like the textbook example of simple rules giving rise to variety and complexity.

Excellent posting, I cited the punchline!

Note there's a reason why species and gods get added so freely, while levels get cut all the time: the former increase the complexity of Crawl in a sideways direction (among games, but not within a game), whereas the latter attempt to make the game shorter (duh!), more tactical and, quoting dynast, less unforgivably forgiving.

Offtopic:
However, I am also citing this for the chess analogy: while that boardgame is indeed a textbook example for simple rules leading to variety and complexity, from a design point of view, it is massively flawed. (Disclaimers: I used to be a chess player, but turned to go already in my youth, and I have some proficiency with go, so I am biased. Also, what I say now should have no impact on your chess games with human opponents.) First, the remis range is ludicrously large (look up "Capablanca draw death" to see how old this idea is). That leads to the second drawback: the starting player advantage is huge, and there is no good way to deal with it (for comparison, go solves this problem very efficiently with komi, and even a game like renju (five-in-a-row) has an elaborate method to deal with this). Do I need to mention that beginning and endgame are sort of scripted? The chess midgame really is interesting, but the ability to swap pieces and decrease complexity is bad design: this is what the player with some material advantage can always go for.

If you are interested in chess, give two variants a chance: shogi (Japanese chess) has a very interesting mechanic in that captured pieces can be placed again! This means that complexity goes up, not down. And xiangqi (Chinese chess) does not only have the coolest piece ever, the cannon, but reduces draw range by confining kings to a 3x3 palace, and forbidding opposing kings to see each other. I only know the rules and a little bit of the basic theory for these two games, though.

To get back to Crawl: note how the restriction in xiangqi reduces options, for a better game! Sounds familiar?

[duvessa]

ITT: people who are not good at chess

[stoneychips]

Or people who would rather have a wider range of situations and more feel of exploration (take some exploration from Pan first - they have plenty?), rather than the same few spaces with more tools to run around in the same smaller box?

But I enjoyed the 27 floor dungeon and Encumbrance system. What do I know.

[daggaz]

That leads to the second drawback: the starting player advantage is huge, and there is no good way to deal with it

What? You've been playing Go too long, man. Between equally ranked players (and especially as their mastery of the game advances), the advantage of white is considered to be very slight at best, and likely mainly psychological at the most advanced levels. And that is just a consensus of opinion, as it has proven impossible so far to mathematically show that white has any advantage what so ever in the long run of an otherwise evenly matched game.

[dpeg]

That leads to the second drawback: the starting player advantage is huge, and there is no good way to deal with it

What? You've been playing Go too long, man. Between equally ranked players (and especially as their mastery of the game advances), the advantage of white is considered to be very slight at best, and likely mainly psychological at the most advanced levels. And that is just a consensus of opinion, as it has proven impossible so far to mathematically show that white has any advantage what so ever in the long run of an otherwise evenly matched game.

Yes, I've been playing Go for 25 years now (and I'm only a decent player, not an expert, of course). What you say about Chess astonished me very much, so I read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess|wikipedia, and while I learned something new from this, it doesn't really match your claims. In any case, there's no need to settle this point -- I guess we wouldn't be able to.

I like my point about the kings' restricted movement in Xiangqi.

[BugHunter]

Here are a a couple of charts made from a database of chess tournament games dating back to 1850.

The first shows that white has been winning between 55-60% of games for the entire time span covered. There's a slight downward trend since 1980 or so, but that's coming down from the peak, and it's still a very clear advantage. You can argue theories and opinions all you want, but in practice, there is a definite advantage to playing white.

Spoiler: show

The second chart shows that the advantage is even more significant for higher rated players, with low ranked players white wins on average around 53%, but with top ranked players it's up over 62%.

Spoiler: show

So if it's just psychological, then it seems that high ranked players are consistently more psyched out by it, which seems a bit odd. I'd expect the opposite.

Charts are from Randy Olsen's blog, specificaly this post and this post

[tompliss]

It matters if you're black of white

... That's racist !

[stoneychips]

Oh fine, let's talk about chess and go forever then and not about what shortening Orc actually does, or how it works in practice.

Nice diversion there. Or maybe some do want Crawl to just be chess?

[Sar]

welcome to crazy yiufs corner

do you want hammers with that?

[daggaz]

Huh, its kind of scary how you can remember reading specifically about something and then your memory ends up being WAY off. I stand significantly corrected, sorry about that..