The Tavern

Disclaimer: I am not an extended player. I have spectated a lot of extended play.

Infinite areas are problematic and players seem to do Pan for two reasons: they're trying to collect runes, they're scumming for Zigs. For players engaged in either of these activities, the rest of Pan appears to be a fairly dull exercise. We could reduce Pan to the four panlord (Edit: Plus Holypan) levels, accessible from untimed single-use portals in the Dungeon. This would free up the demonic rune for reallocation to somewhere like Crypt.

Unlike Hells, players wouldn't have prior knowledge of which Pan they'd be entering when traversing the portal.

Make of this what you want, but here's my semi-random idea for Pan: you can only enter with the orb in your possession.

Thematically, that makes some sense. Obviously, it makes Pan harder. By how much, I cannot say.

The observation that many Pan levels are boring for a character that is completely prepared to do Pan is accurate. However, Pan is one of the most interesting places in the game for characters who aren't completely prepared to do Pan. I don't want a fun challenge like this to be removed. If there's a change to Pan that keeps it a possibility (this one doesn't), then I'd be fine with it. Also cTele would have to removed for this proposal to work.

That's an interesting idea, Brendan. It does make it pretty similar to Hells though. I personally think most of the tedium in pan is actually just looking for the demonic rune; it's really not that tedious flitting through levels until you get unique levels. So it seems like a rather radical solution to a problem that could be fixed without such a drastic effect on the game.

My favorite idea is keeping pan largely as it is, but guaranteeing the 4 unique levels in the first 27 pan levels. Otherwise it remains the same (with an increased chance of exit spawns - both abyss and exit to Depths - after all 4 have been found). Demonic then can be moved somewhere else.

An even simpler solution is to keep pan the same but increase the chances of demonic and exits spawning for each unique rune you have.

I would prefer either of these I think, since they seem to solve most of the tedium issues without a radical shift in how pan works.

You can flee Hells and return later. You also get to pick which Hell you're attempting.

I don't see what's the point of making it unable to choose the level is in this proposal. If you want to get all 4 unique Pan runes, you will just grab all the necessary stuff you have (well, there is not much, rF for Cerebov, rC for Lom) and enter the portal and equip yourself and here's that. If you want one rune for some reasons (to break tedium or to speedrun), you enter level, see it's one of tough lords, exit it, enter another portal. Am I missing something?

Yeah, I don't think from this point of view is different from now: you equip all you need because you don't know when you'll have to face lords and then skim floors until you get 5 runes.
This proposal has the merit, for me, of greatly reduce the tedium (doing 20 floor to get a rune and then skip other 20 to get the other 4 and then do other 10 to find an exit isn't very funny) but on other hand it would make Pan a very simplistic branch (4 floor, 1 rune for floor, I believe lucky player could clear all with a single use of haste and apportation); probably the so many time already proposed solution of keeping the current form but guarantee the 5 rune in the first 27 floor and then place an exit maybe every floor could resolve most of the tedium

Well, and if the demonic rune stayed in pan but it was announced when you arrived, you wouldn't have to tediously clear level after level hunting for it (Since as mentioned, simply going from level to level isn't terribly onerous)

Heck we could even announce exits to Pan and exits the abyss for even less tedium without changing the balance of the levels at all.

I think just guaranteeing that the runes will show up within a certain number of floors is the way to go. It could even be as deterministic as "3 levels, rune floor, 3 levels, rune floor" or something.

I've said this in tileschat a few times, but I might as well say it here: if you portalize the Pan lord vaults, they should be placed in Abyss:5. This might require a redesign of the last Abyss level, but it's already functionally nonexistent for players who aren't desperate for the rune (I note Yermak dived to 5 in his recent sub 30k) and I like the idea of traversing the abyss to reach the distant Lords of Pan. This would also neatly collapse Pan and Abyss into a single "infinite" plane, which might be cool, especially if you take the good parts of both and combine them into one delicious Panbyss sandwich.

That said, I'd also be loathe to lose the Pan's flavor, especially the random lords, who are pretty cool. Pan is currently tedious, yeah, but it might be worth redesigning it rather than cutting everything but the lords and holypan, which, let's be honest, is a crazy death trap. I'm not sure how you make Pan less tedious and more fun, but I'd like a cool Pan over no Pan at all.

e: also, you could stick zig portals down there so people who like to see rows of 27 in the skills menu can be appeased.

This would be a neat idea if the Abyss weren't an unplayable mess right now.

It was my impression that one of the purposes of Pan (and Zigs and extended in general) was to extend the length of a game with a character that you particularly like. Why try to make it shorter and more contained?

Speaking of containment, this proposal doesn't really address the idea that Pan is another world/dimension that you can't immediately return from. Being able to run away at low health and get dumped back in the dungeon is far and away different from running to a Pan portal and getting dumped next to anything from an executioner to a randpanlord to Cerebov puts a little more tension and urgency in the atmosphere.

I assume that, as a portal, if you fucked up the first time and left, that would be it. Running away in this situation would still mean the permanent loss of a rune.

Well, the nice thing about portalizing the Pan Lords and somehow tying that Pan flavor to the Abyss would be the chance to completely rework both branches into a single compelling unit. Imagine, for example, after picking up the Abyssal rune (in a foreshortened 3-level Abyss), you are sucked away into Pandemonium, a single Abyss-like floor with roving Pan Lords guarding awesome vaults with the portals to the named Lords, and maybe access to wizlabs, zigs, and other neat portals, and you're kicked out immediately after grabbing the 4 runes ("With the foo rune in hand, Pandemonium fades around you," or whatever).

Not that this is some kind of masterpiece of game/level design (I can't wait to hear your cutting and erudite analysis, TheDefiniteArticle), but I think there's an argument to be made for taking two problematic infinite areas, cutting out the cruft and nonsense, and creating one really strong infinite area.

I think that this idea could be merged with recent Heaven and God-themed Pan ideas, we could make like 10-15 different-themed Pan levels (like death-themed, nature-themed, holy-themed, w/e-themed) and place 4 or 5 guaranteed portals leading to some of those realms.

As I see it, this proposal would just make pan more safe and much quicker to go through.

Now, when I'm wandering in pan I need to spend some resources and might even find something worthwhile.
And every time I enter a new pan level I'm hoping not to drop straight into lesser pan lords lair filled with tormentors.
Portalizing pan would just make that all go poof. Then I would just gear up, get the runes without much of a hassle and get out.
Personally I think that would be much less fun.

On the other hand, searcing for demonic rune and exit after getting all runes can be somewhat boring. So somekind of chance might be in order. There have been few good proposals in this thread, like announcing the precence of rune/exit or guarantee all runes in certain amount of levels.

edit: Oh, why are infinite areas problematic?