Article in Rock Paper Shotgun about Crawl

[bel]

Here.

[le_nerd]

In in 0.20, Corin intends to trim the core game, cutting Lair to 4 levels (from 6), Lair branches to 3 levels (from 4), and Depth and Vaults to 3-4 levels each (from 5).

!!!!!

[Lasty]

That part is inaccurate. I said it was a plan for the future. I strongly doubt any of that will happen in 0.20.

[le_nerd]

Well I was excited for it! Dont let your caution get in the way of excessive removal

[Rast]

Well I didn't like it. And I still don't. The game doesn't need more xp and items removed.

Lasty, the problem is that you've won crawl 200 times, mostly playing average or bad races, which you win about 25% of the time. And you win about 50% when playing a strong race and giving full effort. You're naturally attracted to anything that will make the game shorter (because you've seen it all by now), and anything that makes it more challenging. Removing floors does both.

But your user base wins 1% of the time. Even for those players who have won several times, most of the game is still fresh to them. Cutting content is not what they want.

The goal should be to make the game fun, not perfectly balanced.

[n1000]

On the other hand, cutting lair isn't really cutting content, but shortening the time newer (and presumably slower) players have to spend in the parts of the early game which they already experience the most. Shortening the game does not have to be a balance change, either. If it becomes too hard when a few floors are removed, just multiply all monster experience/drop rates by x>1 or whatever.

[Steel Neuron]

I really think the point where you reach Lair in the game could do with some mutually exclusive choices. Go down Orc, Lair, or any number of future branches that fit that spot, but only one, which then spawns all side branches. This would shorten the game without lessening the experience, and could be a factor on your build (do I want more permafood? More gear? More gold...?)

[sanka]

I always find it a little puzzling when someone claims that removing some of the late (not dungeon) levels makes the game harder. With playing a little bit of hellcrawl (early versions), I found that it would make the game easier (even without xp/item compensation), because the lost xp and item hardly matters, but there are less opportunity to die.

Of course I guess after a while it will turn when the removed xp actually start to matter (for example going to depths without visiting lair/orc is challenging I admit), but the numbers mentioned are not even close to that. It's depends a little bit on *which* levels of lair/branches are removed, because most of the xp/items are on the last ones, but I guess they would be kept.

[Lasty]

Well I didn't like it. And I still don't. The game doesn't need more xp and items removed.
[...]
But your user base wins 1% of the time. Even for those players who have won several times, most of the game is still fresh to them. Cutting content is not what they want.

The goal should be to make the game fun, not perfectly balanced.

IMO the primary reason to remove these levels isn't about balance or the amount of XP/items, it's about the amount of fun in the game. I believe that the game just takes a little too long, and in particular that some floors feel very redundant. I can't imagine many players are genuinely thinking "the Lair:4 and Lair:5 are my favorite part of the game", for example. As n1000 points out, XP/items can be adjusted w/o adjusting the number of floors per se.

That said, I think in this case that reducing the amount of loot/xp is a good thing. Lair in particular is a huge XP boost that makes the next 10+ levels after Lair far too easy in most cases, and overall it would be good if crawl were harder. Crawl being harder being a good thing has nothing to do with my winrate or my personal enjoyment, it's about un-flattening the top end of play. If players who now win 1% of the time instead make it to Depths 1% of the time and win 0.1% of the time, each of those achievements will feel more meaningful. I strongly believe that a relentlessly difficult game is in the interest of all players, even the worst ones, in that it amplifies the consequences of choices made during the game and attenuates the skill curve / distribution of outcomes. If a game is meant to be hard, and crawl is, then each stage further into the game you get should feel like an achievement in and of itself.

And you win about 50% when playing a strong race and giving full effort.

I don't think I have given a strong race my full effort at any point in the last five years. Full effort is, unfortunately, really boring. That's something I would like to fix.

[tasonir]

I'd be all for removing the listed floors, but would like to see a tweak to exp to compensate. Not sure if/how previous compensation bonus exp was given out before, but probably something like a 10% bonus while in those branches? So that exp in the early dungeon doesn't change, but if a monster spawned in the lair, you get slightly more for killing it (even if you drag it out of lair, to prevent the opposite with people dragging things into lair).

TLDR: Fewer floors is good, but try to keep experience roughly the same.

[duvessa]

Are we just collectively ignoring that they included "elf licker" in the article

[MainiacJoe]

It's not just XP that may needs tweaking when cutting floors, but also exploration piety gain on the gods that care about that.

[MainiacJoe]

Are we just collectively ignoring that they included "elf licker" in the article

That did strike me as weird. I was just glad to see that at least one idea I've had here (putting background selection before species based on what newbies would want to try) made it into discussion on the dev chat, even though I probably wasn't the only person to have that idea.

[papilio]

That part is inaccurate. I said it was a plan for the future. I strongly doubt any of that will happen in 0.20.

why?? please do these in 0.20! they seem very good

[tasonir]

I get the feeling that 20 is starting to somewhat solidify - it isn't by any means locked down yet, but removing 5 floors from the game at once is a pretty big shift, so you probably want to do that pretty early right after a release. Disclaimer: I am not on the dev team

[Siegurt]

I get the feeling that 20 is starting to somewhat solidify - it isn't by any means locked down yet, but removing 5 floors from the game at once is a pretty big shift, so you probably want to do that pretty early right after a release. Disclaimer: I am not on the dev team

I also suspect it takes volunteers time that they may not want to spend right at this very moment to do so properly.