crate wrote:crawl's tactics are good; they're not good enough to support a four hour game without changing at all
And four hours is how long it takes someone who is actually competent at the game. To provide some anecdotal data for the kind of player that isn't, it takes me about 12-14 hours for a melee character or 22-24 hours for a caster to complete a basic 3-rune game. Crawl is a great game, but it can be hard to justify putting that much time into a game when there are so many other things competing for your attention (other games, movies, tv shows, etc.)
I realize that there will be many players who would advocate either simply getting better at the game or playing sprints instead. Unfortunately the former would take a lot of time, thus defeating the point, and the latter is just not the same as the main game, relying far more on spoilers and doing the exact right thing in order not to die instead of the freedom offered by the main game.
Fortunately, the past few versions there has been a strong tendency to reduce the amount of levels, which I fully support. Aside from reducing the overall game length, it also adds more variety since you spend less time in any given environment. As far as I'm concerned, there's still plenty that can be cut. Many levels are currently just filler between the interesting story beats. For most, if not all, branches three levels seems like a decent amount: two levels to get the feel of the place and one harder level with loot/a rune. See Elf and Tomb for examples of this.
Dungeon: currently 15 levels, could be reduced to 12 with little impact
Lair: Already pretty samey due to the monster set, it is also by far the longest remaining non-extended branch at 8 levels, making it dull as dishwater. I would reduce it to 3, or at most 4, levels.
Orcish Mines: Also has fairly low enemy variety. Can easily lose one of its 4 levels.
Lair branches: Can be taken down to 3 instead of 5 levels.
Vaults: Probably the most well-designed branch there is at the moment. Even so, it could stand to lose one or two levels.
Crypt: Three levels is plenty.
Slime: Since I doubt many people explore these levels fully, droppping three levels wouldn't matter much
The four hells: the interesting bit is the fight at the end, not the part leading up to it. Four or five levels should do.
Zot: Aside from the final level it's not all that different from Depths; three levels should get the point across just fine.
Adopting all of these modifications would reduce the length of a typical 3-rune game from 15+5+5+8+4+5+5+5 = 52 to 12+5+3+3+3+3+3+3 = 35 levels, which would significantly reduce the time required to complete a game. It would also cost quite a bit of loot and XP, so these would probably have to be increased a bit to compensate. As far as I'm concerned, however, it would result in a more varied and interesting game that you're more likely to pick up and play since it doesn't take three full work days to finish.
Wins: DEWz^Veh (4 runes), DEWz^Veh (15 runes), DEWz^Sif (3 runes), HOBe^Trog (3 runes), MiDK^Yred (3 runes), DECj^Sif (4 runes), GrBe^Trog (3 runes), DECj^Vehu (3 runes), MiFi^Wu Jian (3 runes), DEFE^Veh (3 runes), DEFE^Veh (15 runes)