The Abyss, its monster set, and more!

[n1000]

Yeah, yeah, low-hanging fruit, everyone hates the abyss already...but lets try to actually figure out how it can be improved/salvaged.

Problems with the Abyss stem from it's dual purpose as an often random punishment for players and a difficult rune branch. Even the first floor has highly variable levels of threat. Presumably the abyss is not meant to be a death-sentence for early-teen characters who are unlucky against Psyche, Erolcha, or an orc wizard, but one might encounter a Starcursed Mass + Executioner and simply be unable to win or escape the fight. This is compounded by the abyss' preventing blinking and severely hampering teleportation. Perhaps powerful combinations of monsters like this are fine for strong characters who are looking for the rune or end up randomly banished, but then the more typical Abyss:1 fodder is just not threatening.

The immense variety of monster mechanics exhibited in the abyss might have been conceived to give strong characters something to think about but in practice it's bad. I recently had an XL27 character banished by a zot trap in Tomb. This character could handle all but the most improbable combinations of Abyss threats without any danger. However, monsters like Starcursed Masses, Wretched Stars, Zymes, Raiju, Tentacled Starspawn, Apocalypse Crab, Maelstrom, Lurking Horror (I'm trying to make a point okay!) each demand specific (read: slow) tactical moves to fight safely. This is made more tedious because the ever-changing layout in the abyss coupled with maprot promotes manual exploration where you stay familiar with the terrain and make sure you don't venture too far from a good corner to fight from. I experienced more than one several-minute stretch where I would explore as quickly as was comfortable for 2-5 minutes without encountering more than a handful of monsters. However, as soon I got impatient and started auto-exploring or just mashing hjklyubn too fast pairings of starcursed mass + anything else show up and then I'm either risking heavy damage or some longer term mutations/sickness all because I didn't have the patience to walk alongside a properly porous wall for 5 minutes.

Above I listed more than half a dozen monsters each with a unique mechanic but Abyss:1 also spawns your typical set of demons and a bunch of stuff from random other branches. There is also a monster called Worldbinder which summons from an arbitrary dungeon branch...

There are several things I do like about the abyss. Its flavor is awesome: An eldritch realm of chaos and bizarre horrors where the very constancy of matter is uncertain. Badass. I've had several fun abyss experiences, mostly on stealth characters. A stealthy character transforms the monsters from the myriad highly specific, time-consuming engagements to "I don't want to fight *anything*" which ends up being kind of cool. Other characters have been banished at a sweet spot of strength, and got lucky enough with abyss spawns and stairs/exits to have a challenging and once or twice even rewarding diversion. Most of the rune vaults I've gotten recently seem to be well designed around a specific gimmick and I tend to enjoy them.

In summary, the problems are: the branch attempts to accommodate teen XL characters as well as end-game characters; the plethora of monsters having unique mechanics, many of which attack something other than HP so even if your character is very strong you must engage them in whatever particular way they demand; the extreme variance of threat (combined with teleporting being bad) means sometimes a low-level character will just die; the tedium of exploration when an amorphous map is coupled with the particular monster set.

So I propose changing the abyss: The Abyss is 2 floors. When you are banished you land on a staircase down. Below is a frantic swarm of monsters, fatal to low-level characters but manageable for dudes who might do 2nd or 3rd rune branch ends. At the end of this gauntlet is the rune and an exit. The first floor is easier but does not have a rune, only an exit. The abyss spawn set is pruned, though maintains its uniqueness. Instead of whatever the abyss has now, it has -ctele. A reduction in the maximum strength of abyss:1 threats (aliches, executioners).

[dpeg]

Thanks for analysis! No time to go into details right now, but one idea that crossed my head: banishment should send different characters to different Abyss levels. You could model this on character XL, or also the banishing source's depth.

[khalil]

I'd go for XL myself, as you'd have a better chance of getting something you can escape from.

[Brannock]

Thanks for analysis! No time to go into details right now, but one idea that crossed my head: banishment should send different characters to different Abyss levels. You could model this on character XL, or also the banishing source's depth.

Doing something like this could allow Banishment strength to be based on monster strength (and not just the severity of the MR check). Deep elven demonologists and ancient liches would be able to banish you to deeper Abyss levels. A kobold getting lucky with distortion would only be able to knock you down to the first level.

I think three would be a better depth for the Abyss than two or five, but I do like the structure of n1000's idea to give more distinct differentiation between the depth levels.

[Wahaha]

The Abyss having 5 floors of increasing difficulty IS how it accommodates both low level and high level characters. You could argue that the first and second floors are too hard. Regardless of such balance issues, there's no problem with the design itself, it already does what you're proposing (in a more elegant way). I think that if down stairs were more common, the 1st and 2nd floors were generally easier, and banishment+entering the abyss did what dpeg said it would be perfect. Also remove random branch monster spawns if those still happen, worldbinders are fine for that.

[WalkerBoh]

I agree that the issue of difficulty can be solved easily enough. Dpeg's suggestion is good, and of course the introduction of abyssal levels was a step in the right direction.

However, I think the below quote really nails what's aggravating about Abyss:

However, monsters like Starcursed Masses, Wretched Stars, Zymes, Raiju, Tentacled Starspawn, Apocalypse Crab, Maelstrom, Lurking Horror (I'm trying to make a point okay!) each demand specific (read: slow) tactical moves to fight safely.

I couldn't put my finger on it before, but this is definitely something that annoys me tremendously. I would say ~30% of the abyss encounters feature a unique mechanic that must be dealt with. This is a lot! Whether the mechanics are good or not is an alternate discussion, but Abyss could be improved greatly by trimming the # or reducing the frequency of unique mechanics a player has to handle.

Possible downside: New, unspoiled players wouldn't have to die as many times to learn how to handle every new threat. I know how much the devs love feasting on newbie despair, after all.

Edit: don't get me wrong, I think some of the abyssal monster mechanics are very cool (wretched stars and starcursed masses are quite interesting, to name two personal likes) but the sheer volume is a bit overwhelming, especially when experienced in such rapid succession and in so many differing combinations.

[and into]

The "useful and constructive feedback," as well as those posts thanking the "useful and constructive feedback," have been removed.

If you are making an argument in GDD and find yourself drawing analogies to masturbation, whatever you are going to post will probably be deleted. So if you *really* don't want to waste anyone's time, save it for CYC, which is the appropriate place for that kind of vituperative venting about stuff in DCSS you don't like.

Thank you!

[Patashu]

What if on any particular 'You are suddenly yanked into a different part of the abyss!' you could only meet a random subset of all the abyss specific nasties?

[spudwalt]

...banishment should send different characters to different Abyss levels. You could model this on character XL, or also the banishing source's depth.

Doing something like this could allow Banishment strength to be based on monster strength (and not just the severity of the MR check). Deep elven demonologists and ancient liches would be able to banish you to deeper Abyss levels. A kobold getting lucky with distortion would only be able to knock you down to the first level.

I like this idea.

I'd say it makes sense to limit what sort of abyss-only things show up on Abyss:1. The farther down the Abyss you go, the more eldritch and horrible it gets. So, a character that gets banished by a lucky kobold or Psyche only runs into the occasional ancient zyme or wretched star, but if an ancient lich hurls you into the abyss, you're fighting the full complement of spatial maelstroms, thrashing horrors, starcursed masses, etc.

[roctavian]

Could some of the monster mechanics be moved to other later branches, and tweaked accordingly?

[n1000]

dpeg's suggestion is fine but I strongly favor depth/monster strength over player XL being the determining factor. However, balance concerns make up only a small part of the problems outlined in the thread. In short, we're not done here!

[dpeg]

n1000: Alright, now with more time. Thanks for the posting, always good to read such thorough analysis!

You are spot on that the main problem of the Abyss is trying to do too many things at once. What it does well, in my opinion: drastically change the player's experience (and tactics etc.) for early banishments. Some call this prolonged death, but I think the tension and completely different approach to gameplay make that Abyss very worthwhile. (I also don't mind, and never did, actually dying in the Abyss. As long as you can run, you still have a chance.)
Where it suffers, in my opinion: providing an interesting challenge for late banishments, particularly late intentional Abyss visits. This is why I immediately thought of different Abyss entry points (still not clear what to do with portals to the Abyss -- any ideas?). I agree that monster depth is a better yardstick for Abyss placement than player XL, for several reasons.

Regarding the monsters: Yes, there's lots of new stuff, especially in the Abyss. Not of all it is top-notch. On the other hand, without trying it would be stagnant from the outset -- not a nice prospect either. I believe we should regard the current trend of prolific monster making as something like Crawl's own Cambrian explosion. There will other times when monsters (and mechanics) are weeded out.

I have no idea what the ideal number of Abyss floors is. Then again, I've been quite skeptical about Abyss levels in the first place (but managed to tell no-one!). It turns out that such levels are a necessary step towards a better functioning Abyss, so thanks to Brendan for coming up with them. The minimum number obviously is two, as you proposed (easy level, hard level) but I think that's a minor point. As soon as we have this parameter (number of levels of the Abyss), we can use it. I noticed that nobody seems to visit Abyss:5, which tells me that some very headstrong banishers should put players right there.

[damiac]

Why does abyss have to have limited depth anyway? Couldn't you reduce much of the abyss to some calculations, like max monster HD generation = X * AbyssDepth, number of monsters generated per X turns = Y*AbyssDepth, banishment sends you to spellpower/X = AbyssDepth, etc?(Maybe in the case of disto weapons, use actual damage done to determine the level of abyss to send you to)

So you can always go deeper, and it just keeps getting harder. I guess maybe there's some practical limit, since theoretically at some depth you'll just be swimming in Aliches, but it's not like you have to specifically code each level anyway.

That means early abyssings aren't a death sentence, they'll be relatively scaled to the appropriate threat level, and you've got practically infinite resolution to keep banishments at any stage of the game from being trivial.

As far as voluntary abyss visits, you could have depths1 send you to abyss1, depths 2 to abyss 2, etc. I'm not so sure about abyss doors from pan.

[WalkerBoh]

I would rather use monster HD than monster depth for selecting banishment level. This also solves disto weapon questions. Better hope it's the orc and not the orc warlord with the disto weapon!

Abyss portals should take you right to the first level a rune spawns on, so Abyss:3 currently. I think 5 levels is a good number, and don't see any need for infinite levels again.

[rchandra]

dpeg: if I am actively looking for the rune I will often go to abyss 5, and if I have a banishment at XL20ish I might do so. But often these characters end up finding a rune vault on Abyss:3 or 4 anyway. (My current tournament character, a FoEE, got banished at XL19 and eventually found the rune on abyss 4, before finding any exits).

[spudwalt]

I think willingly entering an Abyss portal from the Depths should put you on Abyss:1 (or maybe 2). If you planned to enter the abyss, you've already decided you're going to be spending a lot of time there, so it's not as much of a big deal if it takes you a while to work your way down to the level you wanted.

Not sure what should happen if you banish yourself using Lugonu or use an Abyss portal in Pandemonium. Probably you should end up on at least Abyss:2 (according to the current system).

As far as number of floors in the abyss, I'd say there should be at least 3; an easy floor, a medium floor, and a hard one. I think the current 5 floors could work just fine for ramping up difficulty, though.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Some call this prolonged death, but I think the tension and completely different approach to gameplay make that Abyss very worthwhile. (I also don't mind, and never did, actually dying in the Abyss. As long as you can run, you still have a chance.)

The death is not the part of that which is a problem. This should be extremely obvious given the fact that everything in Crawl kills you, but nothing else is anywhere near as awful as the Abyss.

ADOM may have monsters that age your character, but only Crawl developers think it is reasonable for monsters to age the player.

[Sprucery]

Not sure what should happen if you banish yourself using Lugonu or use an Abyss portal in Pandemonium. Probably you should end up on at least Abyss:2 (according to the current system).

I'd say Lugonu should let you choose the Abyss level on which you'll land.

[n1000]

Hello everyone. You could pick which floor you landed on with every character and it would still be really bad. I don't think even the most brilliant heuristic for picking which abyss a character lands on would improve things so much. Most of the points I bring up in the topic are independent of Abyss level.

However,

I think willingly entering an Abyss portal from the Depths should put you on Abyss:1 (or maybe 2). If you planned to enter the abyss, you've already decided you're going to be spending a lot of time there, so it's not as much of a big deal if it takes you a while to work your way down to the level you wanted.

Why is it okay for an overpowered character who chooses to enter the abyss (such a character is almost always going to be stronger than any character to whom banishment was a significant threat) to be forced to deal with 15 minutes of easy wandering around and maybe one hard fight? I mean yeah, I know what I'm getting in to when I willingly enter an abyss portal: probably a too-long slog through a pretty bad branch. How is this "not a big deal" just because I knew about it beforehand?

Anyway...please can we cut out talking about landing on a specific floor. It's a pretty decent idea but the greater systemic problems with the implementation of the branch remain. Also: Dying in the abyss and the branch/floor's difficulty level aren't specifically problems; TheDefinite said it all. The huge variance across the branch and across a given floor within the branch: these are problems, though I suspect they are more symptoms of the underlying problem of the branch trying to do too many things.

One quick proposal which I think can slightly improve things for strong characters looking for the rune: Make the rune vaults more obvious. This might actually be a good use for runed doors. Played an Ash game recently and I noticed that vaults are more common than I thought but on another character I wouldn't have recognized some of them from the outside. Making them a bit more common and obvious would at least accelerate finding the rune a bit.

[Viashino_wizard]

Anyway...please can we cut out talking about landing on a specific floor. It's a pretty decent idea but the greater systemic problems with the implementation of the branch remain. Also: Dying in the abyss and the branch/floor's difficulty level aren't specifically problems; TheDefinite said it all. The huge variance across the branch and across a given floor within the branch: these are problems, though I suspect they are more symptoms of the underlying problem of the branch trying to do too many things.

That's the thing, though. If characters land on specific floors instead of always Abyss: 1, then the floors can be redone to reduce the variance across the same floor.

[crate]

so after actually playing through abyss once recently and "playing" through it again just now, my biggest problem is this:

every single turn you spend in abyss takes a long time
you can mitigate this with autoexplore, but autoexplore in abyss is very very bad for surviving (and this forces you to kill everything you run into, which is also bad)
you cannot mitigate this with shift-move, since the abyss terrain is messed up (and again, you need to kill everything)
every single turn you spend in abyss takes at least a second, roughly, especially online (and more for tiles/slow connections), since after every single turn you must re-check your situation; as I mentioned above, the methods for skipping the turns where nothing interesting happened do not work

I don't see a way to fix this, but maybe other people have ideas. The best suggestion I have is to dramatically increase both the danger level per turn and the number of exits, so at least you'd get a quick resolution (note this doesn't noticeably increase how long turns take, really, since the reason turns take so long right now is that after every turn you need to re-check your situation, not so much that every turn requires thinking), though this runs the "risk" of reducing the amount of skill involved in escaping abyss (but personally I'd see it as a big improvement anyway). This also has the problem that it probably completely wrecks exploring abyss for the rune, but the rune is part of the problem with abyss in the first place (as this topic has discussed) so....

Before it is brought up below: yes I recognize this is what stairs to go deeper do; however, there are problems with the current situation:
1) it is extremely hard for a player to figure out if going deeper is helpful (I have no idea whatsoever, myself, though I guess if I actually choose to play abyss in the future I will just go as deep as I can to end it quickly one way or the other)
2) if it is not actually going to increase survivability to go deeper, you're stuck with the choice of slogging through abyss:1 or doing something that decreases your chance to win the game but at least minimizes the awful slog (this is not a good choice to force players to make, for what I hope are obvious reasons)
3) you still start on abyss:1 even if you'd like to go deeper
4) it might not actually even fix the problem (and doesn't fix other problems that have been brought up)
5) some of the monster set is certainly not suitable for this change (wretched stars are a good example: you cannot afford to just let them mutate you every turn, you cannot outrun them without haste, if the danger gets increased you also cannot fight, so you're just screwed)
there are probably more problems I'm not thinking about

as an aside I don't think the abyss being so different from normal crawl and also being (at least sometimes) mandatory is a good combination ... it would be like if nethack forced you to finish sokoban! but I have little hope of this being changed, so I merely mention this as an aside (I will not comment on it further)

[Sprucery]

What I think about the Abyss:

1) As a rune branch, it's almost perfect as it is. Fun, interesting and challenging. The only thing I don't understand is why Abyss: 4 and 5 exist. I always get the rune from Abyss:3. Sure, without Ash it'll probably take a few thousand turns but that's not a problem for me. I've done the Abyss in 0.13 with a VpVM, FeBe and HuEE.

2) As a place where low-to-mid level characters are banished, something probably could be improved. But maybe all that would be needed is to reveal to the player immediately if a monster is wielding a weapon of distortion.

Maybe Abyss:1 could be made a little easier, so that involuntarily banished characters would have better odds of surviving. Perhaps adjusting the monster set for Abyss:1 would suffice. Maybe generate exits a little more often?

The perfect solution to me would be to make the Abyss two levels deep. The first level would be like now (or a little easier). The second level would be like current Abyss:3.

[TeshiAlair]

How's this as an alternative to banishment: Have it corrupt the floor around you, with radius increasing with spell power. This way, early banishment will be minor, while more powerful sources will essentially be a 1 floor banishment.

[dck]

I don't really want to drag demonologists from elf: 3 to screw with certain places in a fashion similar to dtees opening sword in the stone vaults.