Swamp Slogger
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Proposal: Making the orb return run more dangerous
Maybe it's a dumb idea, but I'd like the return trip to feel more intense.
Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.
Swamp Slogger
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Jeremiah wrote: Perhaps the frequency/difficulty of orb effects should be scaled according to how many runes you have.
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Swamp Slogger
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pubby wrote:The orb run isn't supposed to be extremely dangerous or high-tension.
Swamp Slogger
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Swamp Slogger
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KoboldLord wrote:A simple improvement to the Orb Run would be to concentrate the demon spawns in the immediate vicinity of the stairwells, so you're forced to pass through some of them on the way up. Rather than getting met one at a time and cut down severally, generally without any risk to the player character, you'd get a nasty group forming at each stairwell that is likely to contain something dangerous. They would mostly camp out at those spot, so you can at least somewhat plan your attempt at breaching their formation rather than simply maintaining full hp and mp at all times and hitting teleport whenever something nasty shows its face. That leaves the issue of levels with eight escape hatches, but perhaps escape hatches that lead up can simply be sealed during the Orb Run.
This would probably lead to some interesting moments. Levels that were generated with all three up stairwells clustered together are likely to get quite interesting, since one way or the other you'd have to defeat or sneak past a triple-strength vanguard. If each of those individual vanguards has a decent chance of containing a 1, a random Pan Lord, or a surviving post-endgame unique, direct combat might be flat-out not possible, in which case the player will have to cleverly come up with some way to lure away and outmaneuver these dangerous opponents.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to add Zot monsters to the resistance, too. It honestly doesn't make much sense that orb guardians pretty much entire lose interest in guarding the Orb the moment you make it back to Zot 4, and a surprise orb of fire or ghost moth blocking your route of travel is much more likely to be fun than yet another flock of hellwings. Or groups of mercenaries culled from the top-end player race lists. If nothing else, rare monsters like deep dwarves would potentially have another little chance to shine.
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Swamp Slogger
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danr wrote:I think it would be better if we just accepted that the game has to end at some point. Eventually, the crawl is over. It might as well be when you get the orb or very shortly after.
However, what the heck:
How about just giving the orb irresistible +MUT? That should make the run a little more interesting.
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moocowmoocow wrote:NO! I die enough as it is, without getting my dreams crushed right at the finish line.
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cerebovssquire wrote:There's a reason why we have such a difficulty curve. The "gets harder and harder" curve only makes sense for games without permadeath. With permadeath, the correct design strategy (in my opinion) is to reduce the chance of dying the more the game progresses, in order to reduce player frustration. Obviously the game should never become mindless, and I don't think it does (except maybe in early V/mid-D, these places are really bad in this regard), but this is what should be done to an extent. And being chased by orbs of fire sounds ridiculously dangerous.
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galehar wrote:I think what's needed for the orb run is more variety, and more differentiation based on number of runes. Demons, demons, demons gets boring.
Maybe we could use some code and monster lists from evilmike's Sprint VI? Have some random waves of monsters coming from the upstairs. Scale them with the number of runes, weight them based on which runes you got, and where you are in the dungeon. Zot monsters in Zot, then frequency starts to decrease in the lower dungeon. Undeads from crypt when you're near the Vaults stairs (maybe Vaults monsters if they get differentiated someday), then Lair and Lair branches monsters, then Orcs. Again, location would just change the weighting, I'm not saying only Orcs on the level with the Orcs stairs.
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danr wrote:Also: I have this idea that score is based in part on the items you ascend with. This seems to me to promote the tedious behaviour of, prior to the orb run, running all around the dungeon to collect artefacts that were not helpful for your character but will help your score. But that may have changed because last time I won I notice the game didn't tell me what everything was worth like it used to.
Swamp Slogger
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cerebovssquire wrote:There's a reason why we have such a difficulty curve. The "gets harder and harder" curve only makes sense for games without permadeath. With permadeath, the correct design strategy (in my opinion) is to reduce the chance of dying the more the game progresses, in order to reduce player frustration. Obviously the game should never become mindless, and I don't think it does (except maybe in early V/mid-D, these places are really bad in this regard), but this is what should be done to an extent. And being chased by orbs of fire sounds ridiculously dangerous.
Swamp Slogger
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galehar wrote:I think what's needed for the orb run is more variety, and more differentiation based on number of runes. Demons, demons, demons gets boring.
Maybe we could use some code and monster lists from evilmike's Sprint VI? Have some random waves of monsters coming from the upstairs. Scale them with the number of runes, weight them based on which runes you got, and where you are in the dungeon. Zot monsters in Zot, then frequency starts to decrease in the lower dungeon. Undeads from crypt when you're near the Vaults stairs (maybe Vaults monsters if they get differentiated someday), then Lair and Lair branches monsters, then Orcs. Again, location would just change the weighting, I'm not saying only Orcs on the level with the Orcs stairs.
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danr wrote:I believe Nethack was the same - you get the amulet of Yendor and then have to bring it back up to the surface. It would be okay if DCSS didn't copy the same basic mechanism. Or maybe it's a roguelike essential?
Swamp Slogger
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ais523 wrote:danr wrote:I believe Nethack was the same - you get the amulet of Yendor and then have to bring it back up to the surface. It would be okay if DCSS didn't copy the same basic mechanism. Or maybe it's a roguelike essential?
NetHack has some bonus levels after you bring it back to the surface; the fifth and last of them, Astral, is by far the hardest level in the game (it's the Zot:5 of NetHack, although somewhat easier than Zot:5 is). Most people are pretty happy with that part of the NetHack endgame, although they find the "ascension run" from the bottom level up to D:1 pretty boring.
Crawl has the boring bottom-level-to-D:1 bit, but nothing after it; Zot:5 is really the final test there in of itself.
Dungeon Master
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Eji1700 wrote:I've always been confused about crawl late game. It feels like the threats to an end game character are-
Pan
Hells- Its always struck me that this is more of a "do you have X amount of Y resist"
Zigg - Probably the most difficult thing in the game?
Maybe zot 5, and if you did the previous, probably not?
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duvessa wrote:Christ, you can't remove anything without tavern complaining about it.
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