Apparently I play very slowly and this means I suck

[MainiacJoe]

Here are the real-time durations for my 15 wins, with time/rune:

  Code:

     MiBe{3}  14:08  4:42
 GrEE^Veh{3}  27:44  9:14
 SpEn^Goz{3}  21:21  7:07
     HOAK{3}  11:46  3:55
VSAs^Dith{3}  10:40  3:33
MfGl^Fedh{3}  16:37  5:32
HaHu^Trog{4}  16:10  4:02
MiHu^Trog{3}  12:13  4:04
 TrMo^Oka{3}   7:39  2:33
 KoAr^Pak{5}  20:17  4:03
DsGl^Makh{5}   9:32  1:54
     GrBe{5}  11:51  2:22
     GrBe{5}   9:05  1:49
     GrBe{5}  11:17  2:15
     GrBe{5}  11:28  2:17


First: does this indeed mean that I suck?
Second: When I spectate people online I am utterly amazed at how fast they are playing, even while having a conversation with me! They seem to be making decisions and pressing keys so much faster than I do or can. I have a very hard time actually following people's games. It feels like everything happens so quickly that I can’t figure out what a player did before they’re on another floor doing something else.

So maybe there are in-game habits I could stand to fix, or maybe I just play deliberately yet efficiently, and probably a bit of both. I must say, though, that my enjoyment of the game is very high even with these long game times. I didn't think about this at all until I started seeing lots of references recently to "good players ought to take 3-4 hours" and found myself utterly incapable of imagining myself ever playing that fast.

[goodcoolguy]

Actually, playing slowly is good,

[Psieye]

It boils down to "you know how to make good decisions by thinking, but you haven't made them so often that they become reflex." Nothing wrong with playing the game while your brain's in thinking mode and not reflex mode.

[Dolgar]

Playing too quickly often means dying quickly. Don't worry about that.

[VeryAngryFelid]

You will play faster with experience.
My first games where 13 hours (GrBe, 4 runes, autoexplore), 11 hours (MiGl, 3 runes, autoexplore), yesterday I won in just 5 hours while playing much of the game in manual exploration game (pure melee FoBe needs it on some levels). But don't expect to win in 1-3 hours, that cannot happen without changing the way you play.

[Malevolent]

I tend to play quite fast because sometimes, no matter how carefully I play, I just get into situations I cannot survive (or where I forget about the option that would save me and no reasonable amount of thinking would help me remember) - I might as well just play fast and accept that I'll occasionally lose a character because of speed-related carelessness (it's not even that many characters I lose that way, I usually slow down well before my death and it's cockiness or poor decisions that kill me anyway). If I took 10 hours to get my first rune and then I died, I'd be pissed. If I splatted two characters before Lair (together taking under half an hour) and take 2 hours to get to Depths before dying there, I'd be mildly irritated, and then take consolation from the fact that I still haven't wasted that much time and fire up another character.

I'd play slowly too, if I had the patience. I just don't. Slow is optimal, though, and if you do have the patience, then you should certainly not seek to speed up just for the sake of speed.

[Sprucery]

I'm slow, and I play in patches so I always have to think about where I am and what I'm doing when I start the game. I also micromanage my skills level by level which takes time. A lot of time is also consumed by staring at the full inventory, trying to decide what to drop...

[Hellmonk]

Sometimes my game takes a long time because I eat a yogurt while I play and spill it all over my keyboard and have to clean it up. I don't think that says anything about my crawl skill, though it does say a lot about my eating yogurt skill.

[stoneychips]

I only use auto-explore to finish off levels or with characters I'm feeling pretty confident with. That alone will get you some nagging online, as some people think there's no point to picking your route or making them wait (or something)...

I also spend a lot of time fussing about inventory and skills (not that I'm that great with them but I try), and going back to stashes (at least it would seem a lot for those who don't).

Generally though, I feel more silly when I forget to remind myself of something I could have used before dying... Or for holding down a movement key too long when maybe the dungeon wasn't as clear as it seemed.

So yes, don't worry about it. Take your time, as long as you're enjoying it.

[ximxim]

It depends a lot on the class/race/god combo you're going with, there are several who get so far ahead of the difficulty curve so quickly that there's little point in spending a lot of time, just o + tab to victory. Others require really careful play and lots of retreating, and may never even get ahead of the curve, or are strong in some situations but very vulnerable in others.

[Shard1697]

I think this has to do, more than anything else, with a personality difference, not skill or experience difference. I just can't stand playing that slowly, I'd go mad-and that's something which is independent of skill. I have more wins than you(because I have played 6x the games) and play much faster(my fastest win as of recently is 00:51:58 and my very first win with 4 runes is 06:41:44), but also I have a notably worse winrate than you do-and I assume if you played as many games as I have, your winrate would rise further with experience.

[tabstorm]

It's on the long side for a 15 rune win, but not really that slow. I have seen (new) players win much longer 3 rune games.

We are playing a turn based game here. You have arbitrarily long to decide on each move. Chances are, you are just overthinking your moves, or playing bad characters that are forcing you to think more about each move. Since you are playing a lot of GrBes, I think it is the former. As a GrBe with Axes you can more or less mash buttons and win the game.

[Shtopit]

Slowness is the main reason I stopped playing online. Anyway, better being a slow player than playing like me and dying often by pressing a key instead of another.

[Implojin]

First: does this indeed mean that I suck?
Second: When I spectate people online I am utterly amazed at how fast they are playing, even while having a conversation with me! They seem to be making decisions and pressing keys so much faster than I do or can. I have a very hard time actually following people's games. It feels like everything happens so quickly that I can’t figure out what a player did before they’re on another floor doing something else.

So maybe there are in-game habits I could stand to fix, or maybe I just play deliberately yet efficiently, and probably a bit of both. I must say, though, that my enjoyment of the game is very high even with these long game times. I didn't think about this at all until I started seeing lots of references recently to "good players ought to take 3-4 hours" and found myself utterly incapable of imagining myself ever playing that fast.

Speedruns are a product of veteran players looking for things to do. The fact that these playstyles exist doesn't imply anything about the quality of slower play. Speedrun play can be intentionally suboptimal; you sometimes make tradeoffs to do things more quickly, whether in turns or realtime. Speedruns are somewhat distinct from just playing quickly here, but the principle can still apply.


A lot of gameplay speedup can be assisted through rcfile modification. The rcfile allows for Lua scripting using a number of exposed gameplay variables, so with thoughtful modification (or just borrowing someone's rc) you can automate away as much of the game's i/o as you prefer.

If you look at the rcfiles of the players with the fastest wins, you'll often see things like:
Custom autopickup functions, to automate away realtime spent looking at floor drops.
Customized message channels, to hide flavour text that has no impact on gameplay, or to highlight text that's important.
Custom runrest_stop_message and runrest_ignore_message entries, to interrupt/ignore things that require attention (or don't) when travelling/resting.
Custom force_more_message entries, to alert the player to danger automatically.
Reduced delay settings, to ensure that the game is as responsive as it can be.


Another aspect of it is that as you've learned the game inside and out, many decisions reduce down to nondecisions that happen very quickly. Good positioning becomes automatic, recognizing danger becomes automatic, getting into dangerous situations becomes less frequent as you defuse them out of habit before things go south. You end up piloting diesel characters more quickly because you have a feel for floor danger and for when things are safer.

It's worth remembering that DCSS is a turnbased game where you have all the time in the world to choose your next move. If you reach greatplayer or greaterplayer, you'll likely find that your play has sped up considerably just from experience. If not, that's okay too, because it's fundamentally unimportant.

[nacional100]

Exactly. If you are having fun while playing, it's legit because fun is the ultimate goal.

[Sprucery]

Exactly. If you are having fun while playing, it's legit because fun is the ultimate goal.

Yeah, and if you play slowly like me, you'll have fun longer!

[lethediver]

Keep watching until they auto-explore auto-fight themselves to death and suddenly your own playstyle looks a lot better.

[Brannock]

Keep watching until they auto-explore auto-fight themselves to death and suddenly your own playstyle looks a lot better.

Try this:
autofight_stop = 65