tabstorm wrote:Really, there is no point to having 6 floors.
There's a point, because Hell is designed in the same way. There's no loot, so no incentive to explore; the entire goal is to create an "interesting" dive, where most of the level's challenge or whatever comes from just getting downstairs. Extended is just this in four different ways (with Tomb as the somehow-more-unpleasant exception).
Personally, I think Hell and Slime don't work because a) upstairs and b) overlong dives. The only way to get an interesting challenge out of these dives (more than once, at least) is to go in underleveled, which requires some skilled and lucky speedrunning to even attempt, honestly. To me, a sufficiently friendly Pan and Abyss are the two enjoyable extended dives; if they drag on, they're terrible, but as long as they stick to a reasonable number of level/turns, there's some legitimately fun gameplay. I don't know how you do that for Slime and the Hells, but I suspect it's not "spicing up" the dives, if only because it'd be really hard to do.
(That said, spitballed ideas: each Hell branch forbids certain items/weapons/spells, each Hell branch has very small levels between the vestibule and the ends, Slime gives you cursed-star-style passive mutations the longer you stay there, Slime becomes a "living branch" where you have to destroy pseudopod mini-bosses to open staircases, turn Lair:8 into Slime:6 the way Elf:2 has Hall of Blades, etc.)