Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portals


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Dungeon Dilettante

Posts: 4

Joined: Sunday, 23rd September 2018, 22:05

Post Monday, 24th September 2018, 03:53

Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portals

I would really like an option to have a higher chance of unique monsters and/or random portals. (Currently you see less than 30% of them in average game).

For this message the author Duran has received thanks:
Airwolf

Vaults Vanquisher

Posts: 494

Joined: Friday, 11th February 2011, 17:13

Post Friday, 28th September 2018, 23:00

Re: Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portal

I think one issue with this is that unique monsters and portals are overall pretty dangerous. If the devs did this Crawl would get significantly harder in most cases and characters ahead of the power curve would have an even easier time. I'd like to see more, not less, regression to the mean in Crawl, but maybe that's just me.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Saturday, 29th September 2018, 02:27

Re: Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portal

mrbobbyg wrote:I'd like to see more, not less, regression to the mean in Crawl, but maybe that's just me.
A hundred times this, as the kids say.

Timed portal vaults are arguably the biggest cause of power spiral in DCSS. Strong characters get stronger from all the extra xp and loot in the portal vault. Characters too weak to do the portal vault (or that can't reach it) stay the same. If your character can't do all of a dungeon level, you can just come back later and get all the same xp and loot as a character that did all of the level right away. If your character can't do all of a portal vault, it's permanently weakened.

Power spiral is always a problem in games where you prohibit backtracking, and usually prohibiting backtracking is worth that cost...but prohibiting backtracking in 1% of the game is not much better than 0% at all. Portal vaults are still sufficiently unique and interesting to justify their existence (except labyrinths obviously), but generating them more often would just hurt balance and not help anything else.

Tartarus Sorceror

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Joined: Tuesday, 13th March 2012, 02:48

Post Monday, 1st October 2018, 23:16

Re: Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portal

For normal people, part of what makes crawl fun -- rather than a Go-like ultimate test of pure skill -- is that some runs will be easier than others thanks to randomness. So it's OK that sometimes you will get a big boost from a couple portal vaults.

For this message the author Rast has received thanks:
Shard1697
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Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1762

Joined: Monday, 14th October 2013, 01:05

Post Tuesday, 2nd October 2018, 00:02

Re: Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portal

This is true. Sometimes randomly getting very strong is a big part of what makes roguelikes popular, it scratches a skinner-box esque itch. There's always(or often) a feeling you could find something awesome that makes you really powerful, and for a lot of people, that is the main draw.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Tuesday, 2nd October 2018, 00:23

Re: Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portal

And I posit that the chance of finding said awesome item(s) shouldn't be made higher for characters that are already really powerful. Yet this is what portal vaults do. So I don't want the effect of portal vaults to be even bigger.

I like high variance in what items and monsters generate, I'd like there to be more randomness in fact. But I don't like power spiral, which is completely unrelated to randomness.

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1193

Joined: Friday, 16th January 2015, 20:20

Post Tuesday, 2nd October 2018, 02:16

Re: Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portal

And what if timers were removed?

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Tuesday, 2nd October 2018, 03:01

Re: Idea: Higher chance of unique monsters and random portal

Then the portal aspect of them would be rather pointless; you'd be better off making them regular vaults at that point.

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