Arrhythmia wrote:How do you decide whether or not a character is strong enough to fight V:5 though? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question, what criteria needs to be fulfilled before you, the user Blink, feel that you can take on V:5? Because prior to this change, I actually did have a very simple criterion for doing V:5. My strategy was "move faster than a standard human straight to the rim", and the criterion I needed to do that was "Am I capable of moving faster than a standard human?" If I could answer that question "yes", then if/when I reached V:5 I was ready for it, mostly by virtue of having fought and won against everything in V:1-4. This, reducing a branch end to a single boolean question, is what I actually think of as a no-brainer.
I agree that reducing a branch end to a single boolean question is a no brainer.
And to me this "no-rim" change reduces V5 to a single boolean question: "am I capable of fighting the worst mobs V5 has to throw at me in a deadend?" You have to expect to win this fight since you can no longer avoid it nor change it. And the vast majority of the posters so far have confirmed that they cannot expect to win this fight, pre-Zot. Thus, the change presents a no brainer. Indeed, you prove this by noting that your ideal solution now is to skip V5 in favor of Slime 6.
Prior to this change, I did not see tackling V5 as a single boolean question. I normally find then entrance to Vault before I do the two Lair non-Slime branches: i.e., D to L, do L, do O, D to Depth (when I find V). By this point, I almost always have at least one Speed potion and one Fear scroll. I would not, however, tackle V5 automatically yet. I might. It depends on what else I have and can do.
As a fighter or stabber, Fear/Blink/Fog/Speed/Butteflies should be enough, but likely after I clear D, L, O, and have two runes. As a caster, I would want Repel, Intox if I can get it, plus some form of mana recover (Magic potions may be enough) and a mass kill spell. Depending on my spells, I may not run for the rim at all: with good defenses and a smite attack, I can conceivably try to fight at the stairs and run for the edge if things go bad. In all three cases, having C-Tel, Map, and Tel can do it. But that also depends on whether I plan to do extended. If so, I may want to save Map if the RNGs have been stingy. Thus, to me, the decision is not a no brainer.
With the old V5, I can choose to fight or avoid. With the new change, my only choice is fight.
I agree that more choices is not always good. But more choices is not always bad either. Sometimes more choices is actually good. I see the attempts to balance the melee weapons as moving in this direction: to give players more incentive to choose the different options. I also see Crate's suggestion to open the quadrant corners into the rim as a move into this direction since it gives players more choices and more risk.
I also understand that there are people who do not respond well when someone uses the term "no brainer" or advocates for more players choices. But to be clear, what we have here is a situation where a part of the game has been changed to
reduce player choices, and I am stating that I would prefer that this change be undone, to restore the original choices I had.