Make beginning parts easier, later parts harder

[papilio]

I think the 'good games' have easier beginning parts, and harder later parts.
And the difficulty should not be based on just plain luck which lies beyond player skills and experience.

So, if I were in devTeam, I would push forward these changes:

- Remove Grinder. Being paralyzed immediately after facing the monster -> get instakilled -> just restart the game is not funny at all.
I've completed 30+ times of 15 rune wins, but I still have no idea why this stupid monster appears in early stairs.

- Move adders to deeper parts. Currently, in D:2, if the luck is not good enough, player have no chance to survive.
At least D:4 for appearance seems good for me. (Move killer bee bands to at least D:8 as well)

- Readjust 'out-of-depth' monster spawn in early stages. I've seen many random monster spawns too harsh for given floors -
(e.g. Centaur in D:1, Anubis guard in D:9, ...) These are too nasty.

- Bring -cTele back for only Ziggurats. For wizards with lv9 spells, ziggurats are just lucrative, free farming caves for both item/exp.
Grinding in Roguelikes without serious risk is one of features that should be kicked out with the highest priority.

- Make Zot:5 significantly harder. Let players get 'Mark' status that starts immediately after players enter Zot:5,
and this Mark should not be cancelled unless player pick the Orb or go back to Zot:4. In Zot:5, increase both monster spawn rate and monster density twice (or more).

[VeryAngryFelid]

Thanked for some of those ideas (Grinder, -cTele in zigs, fast OoD monsters).

[and into]

The real problem is overall length of the game I think, though the devs have been addressing this bit by bit, to the overall inprovement of the game.

Zot and early game are pretty great in terms of balance, as it stands, though you could probably take Zot down to 3 levels.

[cerebovssquire]

If you have level 9 spells castable and can clear ziggurats with no risk, any "grinding" you do is not doing anything to increase your chances of winning the game. Ziggurats are there for players who find it fun to create the most powerful characters possible just for the sake of it, they have little to no relevance for normal games. I don't see what's wrong with that.

(Nothing against making ziggurats harder, I don't agree with the grinding argument. If there is a grinding problem it's scumming Lair with mummies/vampires imo, which I have actually done with Gozag mummies to increase my chances of surviving the lair branches).

The zot:5 idea is just ridiculously lethal. I see how the level could be considered to be too easy, but it's still one of the more fun places in the late game imo, with unusual level structure and several strategies to solve it. And the difficulty level is still a step up from the depths/zot1-4 you just had to slog through, which are the really problematic parts.

[Doesnt]

As someone who mostly plays 3-rune games, Zot:5 is already extremely spooky if your character isn't super-buff; auto-Mark would make it borderline impossible for many builds as they'd have no way to separate clusters of Orbs of Fire/Ancient Liches/Curse Toes. It is kind of a tricky place to design though, as 15-rune characters will likely be more than over-geared for it. Maybe there could be a 16th rune somewhere beneath the orb?

[papilio]

The real problem is overall length of the game I think, though the devs have been addressing this bit by bit, to the overall inprovement of the game.

Zot and early game are pretty great in terms of balance, as it stands, though you could probably take Zot down to 3 levels.

I think that the difficulty of well-made game should be based on evaluation of player's judgement on given situations, not the plain luck.

OK, let me bring an example. Suppose that you are CeHu wielding with a longbow in Depth:3, but item luck was not so good, so having just rF+ rC+ rPois but no rN rElec so far.

It is hard to wipe here out, but there is ways to confront almost every possible situations - for example -
Spriggan air mages/Sojobo: Use Yara / Juggernauts: Use stick to snakes, butterflies, whatever / Spark wasps: use blink or invisibility

That is, you can take solutions and prepare options to 'deal with' these nasty monsters.


But, let's get back to our topic, early stages.

You are XL3 HuNe in D:2 and suddenly 2 adders are coming on. Is there a way to survive without teleport scrolls?
Probably you must need potion of might/potion of berserk, or a lucky door between you and adders to close and run afar.
Without them, arguably there is 0% chance to survive. This kind of balancing seems bad for me.

[VeryAngryFelid]

rN+ is not needed, yesterday I had a FoBe who didn't have any rN+ items during the whole game, it didn't prevent me from clearing Crypt, Elf and Zot. Getting Fighting drained by about 1.3 skill from a single bolt of draining that dealt 10 damage was annoying, Shadow Dragons were not pleasant either, but nothing impossible. One more reason to use lighter armour and train Dodging.

[Sar]

You are XL3 HuNe in D:2 and suddenly 2 adders are coming on. Is there a way to survive without teleport scrolls?

Maybe, Vamp Drain is pretty good.

[and into]

The real problem is overall length of the game I think, though the devs have been addressing this bit by bit, to the overall inprovement of the game.

Zot and early game are pretty great in terms of balance, as it stands, though you could probably take Zot down to 3 levels.

I think that the difficulty of well-made game should be based on evaluation of player's judgement on given situations, not the plain luck.

I guess the people who manage long streaks in Crawl even with weak combos are just really really lucky, huh?

Unavoidable deaths happen, but are not common. Even in the early game, most deaths involve a misjudgment or other mistake on the player's part.

[BabyRage]

You are XL3 HuNe in D:2 and suddenly 2 adders are coming on. Is there a way to survive without teleport scrolls?

Just pray to RNGesus and hope for lucky rolls I guess.

[luckless]

- Bring -cTele back for only Ziggurats. For wizards with lv9 spells, ziggurats are just lucrative, free farming caves for both item/exp.
Grinding in Roguelikes without serious risk is one of features that should be kicked out with the highest priority.

some of my favorite late game Crawl experiences have been trying a zig without l9 spells and/or lichform, in order to fill some equipment gap or pay an entry fee for a trove. these often end in tense ?blinking dashes to the exit. don't take that option away!

[VeryAngryFelid]

some of my favorite late game Crawl experiences have been trying a zig without l9 spells and/or lichform, in order to fill some equipment gap or pay an entry fee for a trove. these often end in tense ?blinking dashes to the exit. don't take that option away!

Why? Because otherwise you can die in zig while farming XP and items? It looks like Ice Cave/Volcano can be more dangerous than Zig then, you don't know in advance where final exit is located in those branches. It's weird that Zig 27 can be easier than Pan IMHO.

[stoneychips]

As one of those silly smurfs who's hardly ever gotten a level 9 spell online (okay I have occasionally but I rarely play casters so successfully)... I'd rather not have massive power boosts to the opposition in Zigs wholesale.

Maybe in the lower levels, I wouldn't know, but I appreciate having the early levels for a moderate to scary challenge as they are. Generally I go there when the mix of drops/luck/choices didn't play out so well and I'm missing some part of my item strategy for Zot. Or when I think some luck just might push me into deciding to try for extended after all. Although some of those have been utter wipes, ha.

I'd hardly touch the place with most of these mid to slightly better than my average Zot characters if it were harder from the top levels on.

As far as early game... I can see how people feel adders and Grinder are harsh (and we haven't gotten around to Sigmund). I don't know if I'd go for simply bumping all the adders downward. It's kind of cool to get to a point where you can deal with them earlier. A reduced spawn rate might help... It's when you run into more than one on the eariest levels in one area, they start to feel particularly mean. Grinder, now, I am a little irked about myself. Although orc priests can be even worse sometimes if you catch an early cluster of them.

[tabstorm]

Perma-Mark in Zot:5 would probably make it easier. You could just dig a tunnel near one of the stairs and sit there killing enemies while buffed. After awhile, you could quickly tele-ninja the orb after most of the monsters have cleared out of the lungs. If the monster density were doubled this would be quite a chore and would incentive using Makhleb, but it would still work well enough.

[Sar]

Well, if anyone didn't know you have a preference for heavy armoured melee types, now they don't have to guess!

[tabstorm]

If you were playing a mage, replace sitting in a tunnel with sitting on a staircase with Brilliance active. I mean, it works in V:5...

[PleasingFungus]

I think the 'good games' have easier beginning parts, and harder later parts.

This assumption is fundamentally wrong for roguelikes. In games where you proceed from beginning to end without ever restarting, it makes sense to have the end be more challenging than the beginning, to match player skill. Roguelikes don't work that way: areas need to be designed for players of all skill levels, since you're expected to play repeatedly (many times!), and start from the beginning each time.

On the other hand, there is one thing that scales with how far you are into a roguelike: the amount of frustration caused when you die & have to start over. Frustration is low at the beginning and high at the end, so it makes sense to front-load difficulty and deaths.

[VeryAngryFelid]

This assumption is fundamentally wrong for roguelikes. In games where you proceed from beginning to end without ever restarting, it makes sense to have the end be more challenging than the beginning, to match player skill.

I don't understand what you mean here as "without even restarting". Is player expected to play a game just once and then remove it from their computer?
Ideal crawl is not different here: if every next floor gets harder, player can see their progress: death on D1, D1, D2, D3, D3, D4 etc.
Real crawl is closer to like: D1, D1, D1, D1, D3, D2, <skipped>, D3, Lair 1, Lair 8, Slime 1, Elf 1, Vaults 1, Vaults 5, Depths 1, Depths 3, Depths 5, Vault 5, Zot 5, win.

Roguelikes don't work that way: areas need to be designed for players of all skill levels, since you're expected to play repeatedly (many times!), and start from the beginning each time.

Exactly, so in other games you can play really fast until you reach challenging levels, then you slow down and pay attention. Some games even give option of "quick start" or have difficulty settings (in the latter case the game is enjoyable right from first second and till the death or win).
In crawl you reach Lair, clear it along with Orc and start to think about playing another character because it becomes boring and easier with every floor...
It is no wonder crate-crawl exists.

On the other hand, there is one thing that scales with how far you are into a roguelike: the amount of frustration caused when you die & have to start over. Frustration is low at the beginning and high at the end, so it makes sense to front-load difficulty and deaths.

Why? If players continue to play the game after reaching easy stage, they don't care about dying that much, they are either enjoying their OP character or are going for win in which case they are asking devs to make the game shorter.

Only a few characters in real crawl are played like in ideal crawl, I suspended playing Fe of Nemelex in 0.18 because it becomes harder with every floor, that's how real crawl should look: players are stuck because they did some strategic mistakes or because they reached limit of their expertise.

[Lasiace]

Personally I don't really think that it would be good to have easy->hard progression. This might just be because I used to play a lot of tome, but goddamn can it get fucking boring playing through the same trivial dungeons over and over and over... If you changed the difficulty progression to what you're suggesting, this would probably end up being the same. You would really just be moving the easy part from end game to early game, which really just means I have to play something utterly pointless every game instead of every once in a while when I get something going. The overall length of time where you actually give a damn about what's happening is still the same overall. You can say at least new players can make more progress earlier, but really they're still making progress regardless, its just more compressed into the early dungeon and more spread out later.

Of course there's a point to be made that progress would look more regular, and maybe even look more significant, but is that really all that important? For me personally, that point where I suddenly start making big progress is something I actually like, as compared to a slow and more regular progress, but feelings about progress are really subjective and probably not worth arguing about.

Regardless I would say that making the easier parts earlier would just increase overall boredom, moreso as you get better and better, so I'd have to disagree with that. I stopped playing tome for a reason, even though I like the game. If you added a quick start then sure, you'd avoid needing to replay something pointless over and over, but isn't reducing the length of endgame essentially doing the same thing?

[Siegurt]

For what it's worth i already feel like the early game is too easy.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Personally I don't really think that it would be good to have easy->hard progression. This might just be because I used to play a lot of tome, but goddamn can it get fucking boring playing through the same trivial dungeons over and over and over... If you changed the difficulty progression to what you're suggesting, this would probably end up being the same. You would really just be moving the easy part from end game to early game, which really just means I have to play something utterly pointless every game instead of every once in a while when I get something going. The overall length of time where you actually give a damn about what's happening is still the same overall. You can say at least new players can make more progress earlier, but really they're still making progress regardless, its just more compressed into the early dungeon and more spread out later.

Of course there's a point to be made that progress would look more regular, and maybe even look more significant, but is that really all that important? For me personally, that point where I suddenly start making big progress is something I actually like, as compared to a slow and more regular progress, but feelings about progress are really subjective and probably not worth arguing about.

Regardless I would say that making the easier parts earlier would just increase overall boredom, moreso as you get better and better, so I'd have to disagree with that. I stopped playing tome for a reason, even though I like the game. If you added a quick start then sure, you'd avoid needing to replay something pointless over and over, but isn't reducing the length of endgame essentially doing the same thing?

As I wrote above, this is common problem and it is solved via quickstart and/or difficulty levels.
When you are new player in typical game, you struggle with "easy" early levels, then you struggle with "hard" late levels, eventually you win. Now you are a much better player so to keep having fun you must either pick a harder combo or increase difficulty level, so you again struggle with "easy" early levels, then with "hard" late levels and win again. Increase difficulty again or pick even harder combo.
Neither of those options work in crawl, once you reached Lair with Mu of Chei or Fo of Xom or whatever, you are bored. So you can struggle with early levels but not with late levels because you should have died on early levels instead.

I started playing Path of Exile recently and I see it suffers from what you described, it is very boring to play first hours because it is extremely easy for all combos, then you die in 5 seconds (if playing in permadeath) and have to spend several hours to get to interesting level again. Only difficulty levels and quickstart can help.
Reducing endgame is not the same thing unless we feel starting another character after reaching Lair or Vaults is ok.

[dpeg]

Maybe we should start another thread about consumables.

That's a good idea, but it should take place in a separate thread.

Moderators: Could you move the previous two posts to a new thread? Thanks!

[and into]

Topic has been split, please discuss consumables specifically in the new thread:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=21439