Lair subbranches with 4 floors feedback

[tasonir]

Discuss trunk runs with the shorter lair subbranches here! Trimmed log from an in progress spriggan:

  Code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.17-a0-964-gd3d8594 (webtiles) character file.

tasonir the Black Belt (Spriggan Monk)             Turns: 47187, Time: 04:25:27

Health: 105/105    AC: 18    Str: 23      XL:     20   Next: 67%
Magic:  31/42      EV: 39    Int: 29 (31) God:    Cheibriados [******]
Gold:   1133       SH: 11    Dex: 37      Spells: 11 memorised, 6 levels left

rFire  . . .     SeeInvis +       - Unarmed
rCold  . . .     Clarity  .     c - +4 troll leather armour {regen}
rNeg   . . .     SustAb   .     T - +0 buckler {rPois}
rPois  +         Gourm    .     R - +1 hat
rElec  .         Spirit   .     B - +0 cloak
rCorr  +         Warding  .     (gloves unavailable)
rMut   .         Stasis   .     (boots unavailable)
MR     +++..                    v - amulet of resist corrosion {rCorr, !d}
Stlth  ++++......               V - +4 ring of protection
                                D - ring of wizardry {Wiz+, !d}

@: studying Armour, very slow, extremely resistant to hostile enchantments,
stealthy
A: unfitting armour, yellow scales 1, see invisible, herbivore 3, speed 3, slow
metabolism 2
a: Bend Time, Temporal Distortion, Slouch, Step From Time, Renounce Religion
}: 2/15 runes: serpentine, barnacled


You are on level 2 of the Vaults.
You worship Cheibriados.
Cheibriados is exalted by your worship.
You are not hungry.

You have visited 7 branches of the dungeon, and seen 39 of its levels.
You have also visited: Labyrinth, Sewer and Ice Cave.

You have collected 4419 gold pieces.
You have spent 3286 gold pieces at shops.

   Skills:
 - Level 11.0 Fighting
 - Level 9.2 Armour
 - Level 16.1 Dodging
 - Level 3.0 Stealth
 - Level 5.9 Shields
 - Level 17.8 Unarmed Combat
 + Level 17.6 Spellcasting
 - Level 6.3 Charms
 - Level 5.2 Summonings
 - Level 7.0 Necromancy
 - Level 15.0 Translocations
 - Level 9.8 Invocations
 - Level 9.1 Evocations


You have 6 spell levels left.
You know the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Regeneration          Chrm/Necr      ######....   1%          3    None
b - Vampiric Draining     Necr           ######....   1%          3    None
c - Aura of Abjuration    Summ           ######....   4%          5    None
d - Shadow Creatures      Summ           N/A          4%          5    None
e - Iskenderun's Mystic   Conj           ####....     10%         4    None
f - Apportation           Tloc           #######...   0%          1    None
g - Summon Butterflies    Summ           ######..     1%          1    None
h - Iron Shot             Conj/Erth      ####......   97%         6    ##.....
i - Controlled Blink      Tloc           N/A          1%          7    ####...
j - Control Teleport      Chrm/Tloc      ######....   1%          4    None
k - Singularity           Tloc           #######...   97%         9    #######


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (15/15)            Temple (1/1) D:4            Lair (8/8) D:9
 Shoals (4/4) Lair:6        Snake (4/4) Lair:5        Slime (0/6) Lair:6
    Orc (4/4) D:9             Elf (0/3) Orc:4        Vaults (3/5) D:14
 Depths (0/5) D:15       
 Crypt: Vaults:2-3 

I fired up a spriggan monk, currently on vaults:2, collected both lair runes (but I did NOT fully clear snake:4, which has vashia on it, and so about half the floor was left alone). Really feeling low on experience, but that is likely due to me playing hybrids who branch out in a lot of different directions as well. Still, I'm relying on wizardry to keep abjuration/shadow creatures castable, had Cblink at a highish failure for a while (It's 1% now but only with wizardry on), couldn't get quite as much spellcasting/fighting/dodging as I'd have liked. I'm starting to finally feel "caught up" as I get deeper into vaults, finally was able to train more fighting and get over 100 hp. There are some "nice to have" skills like stealth that I haven't even touched yet, despite the +5 aptitude. I'd like more of skills like necromancy, but I can't really see justifying them over everything else I'm behind on.

Granted, I'm training a LOT of skills on this character, and berserkers probably won't notice the change much, but I think it's good to consider the change on all types of characters What has been your experience with less experience?

Overall I like it, it's definitely challenging for "toolbox" characters who try to get a lot of things online, but that isn't necessarily a problem. I might have to focus characters a little bit tighter in the future, dropping something like summoning perhaps, not wearing a buckler, dunno. Armor skill is only as high as it is because I have a manual.

[duvessa]

I don't think it changes much. The first level of S branches didn't have a lot of experience in the first place and experience scales up really fast. I like the change though, it's not like D where you actually notice a difference between levels (really I think they could go to 2 or 1 without losing much).

[elmdor]

Yeah I concur. The difference in XP barely registers. I think it would be much more of an issue if the length was reduced in Vaults or Depths, where XP is much richer.

[TeshiAlair]

I really like this change overall. Now all we need to do is make Slime not six damn floors.

[johlstei]

Are we voting here? IMO reduce lair to 4, lair branches to 2, vaults to 3, depths to 3, zot to 3.

[dpeg]

johlstein: Sorry to spray water, but we're taking votes.

On Slime: in my opinion, that branch is good at depth 6: the monsters are often reasonably dangerous, there is no loot, and the walls get more dangerous as you go deeper.

[Zwobot]

Am I the only one that actually likes the lair branches???

That being said, the change didn't affect my games much (at all). Would even work decently with only three levels - though not less in my opinion. And I tend to play badly skilled, unfocused hybrid characters myself.

[celem]

On Slime: .... and the walls get more dangerous as you go deeper.

You learn something new every day...

I dont mind the 4-floor S-branches too much, feels somewhat less of a slog. I would have supported shortening Slime just because it makes life easier and nobody clears those anyway...but I guess thats the point, it may as well stay at 6 since nobody is clearing anyway, so the difficulty comes from the number of stairs you need to find and dive. (and yeah, the natives are not trash)

It doesnt seem to much impact the XP available. I have had a few runs now where i've been lower than i'm used to, and I was about to blame this on shorter S-branches, but checking the morgues in detail shows I've had a habit lately of not doing vaults/elf/crypt, which I always used to squeeze into a 3-rune game. Lately i've been going more for speed and skipping as much as possible. This is the kinda play that leaves you under-leveled.

[all before]

Lair: 6 floors
S's: 3 (ahem, I also support only having to complete 1 of these)
Zot: 3

[pubby]

Are we voting here? IMO reduce lair to 4, lair branches to 2, vaults to 3, depths to 3, zot to 3.

My vote would be to keep the current number of floors but remove/reduce floor items on every floor but the last. Also, balance XP so that the last floor gives ~75% of the branch's total XP. Let's encourage diving for once.

[Sar]

As long as there are any items at all I'm still gonna explore them, especially when the overall threat is much lower (I assume by reducing XP you mean reducing the amount of monsters and not just making them give you 1/4 XP until you reach the bottom).

[Sprucery]

Here's my list: Lair:10, Lair branches:5 (except Slime:6), Vaults:8, Elf:7, Crypt:5, Zot:5, cut Depths and make D:27. Oh wait...

[pubby]

(I assume by reducing XP you mean reducing the amount of monsters and not just making them give you 1/4 XP until you reach the bottom).

Mostly just reduce the amount of XP medium-tier monsters give (Naga Warrior) and increase the XP bottom-floor boss monsters (Greater Naga) give. There is also something to be said about the Runes giving out XP and balancing around that, but perhaps that is outside the scope of this thread.

[Speleothing]

Am I the only one that actually likes the lair branches???

That being said, the change didn't affect my games much (at all). Would even work decently with only three levels - though not less in my opinion. And I tend to play badly skilled, unfocused hybrid characters myself.

The lair branches are where the game is at its best - not earlygame where you can only hope for the best, but not the invincible lategame or the tedious, repetitive postgame.

Keep them as they are: 5 levels for the main 2, 6 levels for Slime. Maybe spawn more tricky mid-depth subvaults to keep things interesting?

5 is a good number for Vaults, but I wouldn't mind seeing it extended back out to 8 if we can come up with a couple of higher-tier enemies for 5,6,7.

[Sar]

I like Lair branches, I just think they're too long.

[bcadren]

I like Lair branches, I just think they're too long.

You know I think the FIRST lair branch you go through is fine; you may need the XP then. The second tends to be too long as the first floors are now easy after your first rune. Perhaps we could have the second lair branch shorter than the first? Or maybe the two loot-heavy ones are long and the loot-light ones are short? In other words:

• You get either Shoals or Snake (5 levels each).
• You get either Swamp or Spider (3 levels each).

[all before]

I much prefer D, V, and U to any of the S's, L, or O. The former offer a much greater variety of threats while still being distinctive.

[mps]

I think shorter lair branches is good. What makes lair branches and, in fact, many other parts of the game tedious is randomly placed item drops and evenly distributed monsters. "Optimal play" dictates that you fully explore every level to collect the loot and xp. That's the tedium, right there.

The best parts of crawl are the end branch fights and vaults. The diffuse find-every-monster-and-item style of play is lame. This is what hells and slime get right: You don't want to explore, you just want to get to the fight and vaults at the bottom. Evading monsters and choosing your battles is fine as filler content. Autoexplore, tab, and of course extensive luring are much less so.

Reducing the number of floors in branches reduces the issue, but doesn't really take it head on. The real story here is what I'd call spaghetti layouts. The stuff that's actually interesting and sometimes (but by no means always) well-designed are the vaults. The procedurally generated layouts are often remarkably bad. In lair and some of its branches, they appear to be just Perlin noise with threshold functions applied to produce walls, water, and so on. Spider is particularly egregious in this regard. (In fact, though, the noise layouts tend to be better than the illogical, dead-end riddled mess of hallways you see in many of the dungeon layouts or worse the dungeon layouts with veins that run to the edge of the map and dead-end, all of which optimal play dictates the player explore. Snake has some of this too, although it seems somehow more open. I may well be mistaken in thinking there's a real difference there.)

There are at least two possible ways to come at the tedium issue: One is to make maps "flow" so that there's a path or collection of paths one naturally takes through them and one encounters all or almost all the key content along the way. You pick up all the xp and loot along the way with enough terrain, choice of path, and escape hatches that you can avoid fights at the cost of loot and xp if you choose. This would take a lot of work, but I think it would be worthwhile. The other would be to move the sprinkling of random loot, shops, and vaults from most levels to the end branch vaults so that the cost of diving is primarily loss of xp. In effect, all branches would operate like slime and hells, though with less hostile environments pushing you to dive. This would be easier, but probably not better. There's so much xp around, though, that those who opt to dive would be treated to a doable challenge with a brisk pace.

[jejorda2]

Shaft traps matter a lot less with shorter branches

Oh well.

[celem]

Makes them even more dangerous to be honest. More of the branch is within shaft-range of the vault-floor. Infact since shafts can drop you 3, you could in theory enter Snake, take a step and shaft to the vault-fight. For the right character thats ninja, for the rest !fun!.

[asdu]

layouts with veins that run to the edge of the map and dead-end, all of which optimal play dictates the player explore

That layout is easily the worst thing added to Crawl since felids, but, unlike felids, I can't just pretend it doesn't exist.

[bcadren]

Makes them even more dangerous to be honest. More of the branch is within shaft-range of the vault-floor. Infact since shafts can drop you 3, you could in theory enter Snake, take a step and shaft to the vault-fight. For the right character thats ninja, for the rest !fun!.

There's a special exception that makes it so you can only shaft to the vault floor from the one above. So regardless of length, there's one floor that shafts to $.

[Sprucery]

Personally, I don't find it tedious to explore levels. I press 'o' and it happens.

[mps]

The assumption that everyone is using 'o' for all exploration has been a disaster for crawl map design. To look at crawl maps, you would think you were playing a scratch off game where the point is to slowly reveal a neat picture in your minimap.

[Sar]

DCSS started as an autoexplore patch for Crawl, so that's not a very far-fetched assumption.

[mps]

Sometimes the natural assumption has negative consequences. Life is a funny thing.

[XuaXua]

There is also something to be said about the Runes giving out XP and balancing around that, but perhaps that is outside the scope of this thread.

I think reducing overall monster XP rewards and adding a mechanic that rewarded exploration/discovery with XP (scaled to depth) would be interesting, especially for non-combat builds. At worst, having a diety mechanic that did this might be something.

I once had the idea that the pre-generated level would take 20% of all XP from all generated monsters and distribute it across the level, have "discovery" of a given monster betstow 10% of the XP from that monster, and damaging but not killing the monster rewards up to 20% of the XP based on the % of damage the monster was reduced to. Killing (or otherwise rendering reversibly (on attack) non-hostile) the monster would give any leftover XP.

[archaeo]

Put me down for cutting more levels, especially Lair and its branches. Lair's length is totally ridiculous; it's the section of the game I dread most, since it goes on forever and it's rarely dangerous. I'd just cut Lair to 5 and all of its branches, including the pretty-inexplicable-it's-so-long Slime, to 3. The second worst section of the game, to me, is Hell. I understand the forced-to-dive design, but doing it four times in a row is mind-numbing, especially since you have to do it all over again if you need to retreat. You could easily cut a couple levels off of each hell.

The third worst is Tomb, but that tediousness has way more to do with the monster set and how often it forces you to sit around 5'ing on the downstairs than it does with its actual length. After that, it's just a matter of getting Pan and Abyss rune vault spawn rates right, and you could go a long way toward getting a better pacing going in the average crawl game.

The assumption that everyone is using 'o' for all exploration has been a disaster for crawl map design. To look at crawl maps, you would think you were playing a scratch off game where the point is to slowly reveal a neat picture in your minimap.

I'm not sure how this is a true statement; I find crawl's layouts to be varied and generally does a decent job of switching up playstyles. There's some merit to the idea that the levels are too big, but I don't see a lot of problems with the general architecture of things, bad vaults aside.

[bel]

I mentioned this elsewhere, but not here.

I think cutting the lair branches down to 4 was a good idea. I wouldn't mind cutting it to 3 or even less. There is not too much difficulty difference between the floors, and the lost XP is not too much. But I don't see too many issues since I dive to the bottom floor anyway, if I'm bored.

I don't know if other branches are supposed to be discussed here. Lair could do with some cutting down. 5 is a good number. Zot could be cut down to 3 as well. I generally like Vaults, perhaps it can stay at 5, though I wouldn't mind cutting it down a bit as well. Orc should of course be cut, perhaps to 2.

In general, there is plenty of XP in the game, so I wouldn't miss a few floors.

[XuaXua]

After that, it's just a matter of getting Pan and Abyss rune vault spawn rates right, and you could go a long way toward getting a better pacing going in the average crawl game.

Ugh. I hate when I have to dive Pan.

[dpeg]

I don't understand why everyone is outbidding everyone else about cutting levels. We're doing this for ten or so releases now, and I think it's a good idea to do this continuously rather than in big, sweeping cuts.

Also, in my opinion Hells and Slime are fine at their current lengths (Slime has no loot, Hells have their unique diving mechanic). Note that Lair used to sit at ten levels.

[all before]

dpeg: on the other hand, why not put up an experimental branch with large cuts? it would give devs and players a chance to learn, see what works and doesn't with a shorter midgame, what other changes would be necessary, how much harder the game really is, etc.

[XuaXua]

I made a poll thread to help try and keep the feedback topical.

[mps]

The assumption that everyone is using 'o' for all exploration has been a disaster for crawl map design. To look at crawl maps, you would think you were playing a scratch off game where the point is to slowly reveal a neat picture in your minimap.

I'm not sure how this is a true statement; I find crawl's layouts to be varied and generally does a decent job of switching up playstyles. There's some merit to the idea that the levels are too big, but I don't see a lot of problems with the general architecture of things, bad vaults aside.

I agree that they're varied, I just don't think they're uniformly good. Many are outright bad. The general architecture of levels is that there is no architecture outside of end branch vaults -- which are the most interesting parts of the game. Elsewhere, levels are diffuse and formless. You have generally unimportant vaults, many of which seem to be purely decorative, and all the incentives are to explore and kill everything. Now 'o' is happy to forge a meandering path through all of this random junk and that's what most people do, but if for some reason you can't autoexplore it, you're in for a pretty damn boring ride.

I think the problem is that in the context of roguelike games, people have a difficult time conceptualizing what a more concentrated or directed or "designed" procedural layout could be. On one hand, people have this idea that direction means linearity and have illusions about "nonlinearity" -- in the context of crawl, this is a litle silly, since at the level of single floor exploration, there's only one direction in normal play: 'o'. What crawl (non-branch end) levels lack is form, in the sense of music composition. Parts of levels are not tied to gameplay functions and everything is thrown together in a fairly haphazard way. Everything is different in a way that makes everything the same.

I'll give a simple example to suggest what alternatives could look like: Suppose you had a style of level that consists of two vaults each housing two-way stairs with two or three entrances each. Say they're at opposite corners of the map. In between you have a system of rooms and a small number of logically laid-out corridors (no spirals, no dead ends, no loops) that contain relatively low tier threats and no loot. All of them lie within some strip connecting the two vaults. The rooms and corridors are just enough so that there's some choice in what to path to take, what monsters to fight, and how to approach the stair vault at the end. This section would also have two escape hatches, one up, one down. The stair vault at the end then has more serious threats and all of the worthwhile loot on the level.

There's tons of room there for randomization of monsters, loot, and room and hall layouts, yet the level still has some coherence from a gameplay perspective. You don't need 'o' in layouts like this! You could imagine variations on this formula. The main idea is to keep hall complexity low and for the level to "flow," i.e. have a natural path (or paths) of exploration that doesn't require a lot of doubling back, which makes progress toward an identifiable goal, and doesn't leave you wondering what was in the places you skipped over.

[dpeg]

dpeg: on the other hand, why not put up an experimental branch with large cuts? it would give devs and players a chance to learn, see what works and doesn't with a shorter midgame, what other changes would be necessary, how much harder the game really is, etc.

There's no doubt that it'll be winnable: speedrunning exists, and there's a lot of leeway in the game. The question is how far to reduce levels so that everyone can go with it.

[archaeo]

snip

Interesting, though it seems like a topic for its own thread.

I don't understand why everyone is outbidding everyone else about cutting levels. We're doing this for ten or so releases now, and I think it's a good idea to do this continuously rather than in big, sweeping cuts.

So the long arc of crawl history bends toward crawl justice? I think however you want to slice it, people basically agree that the midgame feels bloated; we just disagree on how much you need to cut to prevent that feeling.

Also, in my opinion Hells and Slime are fine at their current lengths (Slime has no loot, Hells have their unique diving mechanic). Note that Lair used to sit at ten levels.

Slime is one really excellent level proceeded by 5 levels that are non-dangerous ambushes if you have any business being in Slime. No loot and orc-style map layouts mean that you're going to dive through them mindlessly, and what's the point of mindless gameplay?

Hells, on the other hand, are a whole other level of awfulness, since it makes you do the same dull hide-and-seek minigame twenty-four times in a row. I could understand a handful of these levels, but the game makes you traverse a space nearly as big as Dungeon, Depths, and Zot, all in the service of a staircase-finding minigame that stops being fun long before it's over.

[tasonir]

I wouldn't mind shorter slime/hell branches. For me slime tends to be such small levels that the stairs are quite frequently right next to where you entered the level anyways...I'd rather see a large open layout with 2-3 floors, and make the stairs on the other side of the floor, so you actually have to cross space.

[XuaXua]

On topic, I've just played a game with 4 floors and I felt that by the time I reached floor 3 of each level, I wanted to be done already. 4 floors is still tedious, but 3 floors is probably just enough.

Perhaps consider making it 3 floors, but reducing the number of up/down stairs to 2 bi-direction + 1 one-way.

[archaeo]

Perhaps consider making it 3 floors, but reducing the number of up/down stairs to 2 bi-direction + 1 one-way.

Why would you limit stairs? We don't for any other 3-floor branch.

[Sar]

in the context of crawl, this is a litle silly, since at the level of single floor exploration, there's only one direction in normal play: 'o'

There is also exclusion button.

[and into]

I agree that many of the branches cease being fresh before you finish them, but I also think that the experience available as you progress in Crawl is roughly in a good place. My sense is that the Lair branches could be trimmed down without much in the way of compensation (and do w/e with extended), but I actually like that the Lair itself provides a good deal of experience. It does let HOBes and the like get even further ahead of the power curve (which might not be great), but it also supports using weird combos with bad apts, and can enable a bit more experimentation with skill investment based on some unusual combination of item spawns.

I'd be interested playing a version with more sweeping cuts to the number of floors, but some increases to the amount of experience given by killing certain enemies might be necessary following that.

Not strictly related, but: Cutting down many of the vanilla orcs and orc wizards in the Mines, and getting rid of (hob)goblins in Orc altogether, would vastly improve the branch.

[sanka]

I also think that the experience available as you progress in Crawl is roughly in a good place.

In one sense, when you think on the amount of available xp for the game I think you are right - it's roughtly in a good place.

But if you take a look at character development you will see a lot of characters (I play MuWn-s frequently, and even them) are developed by the end of Dungeon/Lair (Orc). I usually has a good weapon at mindelay, fighting dodging and a level 6 spell (for example, Haste). So far development deceisons were interesting: it was quite fun to figure out what to train to survive the next level, and in a couple of levels your character changes a lot.

After this point the game becomes really slow. You clear whole branches (5 floors, with lots and lots of fights) to learn one more spell or to improve your defences a little bit, and most of the time it does not really changes your character anymore. Yeah, you can dive if you are bored - but optimal play for surviving is tedious for me from this point.

I do not say that there are no interesting moments in the second half - but they come very rarely, and usually I die because I'm bored, not because something is really dangerous.

[bel]

I like Vaults generally, so I don't agree that midgame is boring. Depths is fairly challenging as well.Difficulty spikes there.

[XuaXua]

Perhaps consider making it 3 floors, but reducing the number of up/down stairs to 2 bi-direction + 1 one-way.

Why would you limit stairs? We don't for any other 3-floor branch.

For reasons of accessibility.

The bottom floors of other 3-floor branches (Crypt, Elf) don't have runes to protect, but have, themselves, semi-protected bottom floor vaults, usually causing the bottom floor entrances to cluster. I don't count Orc (4 floors) or Tomb (sculpted structure). Stairs generally don't cluster on the more open floors of Spider / Swamp / Shoals (they do for Snake; some can argue Spider). This already allows for semi-easy diving on 5 floors; by removing one access point, the need to cluster the points to reduce the rate of rune accessibility, is somewhat removed. This also increases the duration and potential danger level of the now lesser floors by providing fewer escape routes.