Pan zigs should be announced, timed portals

[Pollen_Golem]

Unlike rune-hunting, you do not get a notice when you find yourself on a level with a zig.
The worst part about megazigging is exploring levels just because they may have a zig somewhere.
It's enough to turn people off of megazigging completely.
Why not make zig-hunting more palatable and warn players when a zig is on the level?

[archaeo]

Personally, I'd prefer that on Zig:27, the player just gets an item that opens a portal to a new Zig.

The "announce portal" thing would also be fine, but I think "zig hunting" in Pan is already kind of terrible. I'd remove it, with guaranteed portals only in Depths and randomly on Abyss:5. Otherwise, you have to finish a Zig and get a "Figurine of a Zig Portal" or something.

[chequers]

It might be hard turning them into timed portals, but announcing if a Pan level has a zig should be straightforward.

[le_nerd]

Even for a part of the game that is explicitely made for scumming, the endless search for random hidden Zigg-portals in is at such an extraordinaire level of scumming that any change in a less scummy direction is better. This is even more true since the introduction of Megazigs, which exist solely for the purpose of mega scumming.

[nago]

[le_nerd]

You know, this would be even more funny if that wasn't exactly what has happened.

[asdu]

IMO, remove ziggurats from the game and make them into a kind of "victory lap" game mode available to characters who have ascended.

[KoboldLord]

It would also be preferable if they were turn-locked so you can't get them if you've been wasting too many turns grinding. Not to the extent of requiring a full-scale speedrun, but strict enough that you have to make legitimately hard choices with your build instead of just maxing out all relevant skills. If that requires Zigs to be easier, that's fine; they would at least be a legitimate gameplay challenge instead of a checklist of countermeasures to grind up.

[adozu]

well some people enjoy mega-scumming/premature-victorylapping/countermeasurechecklisting as is, why change it if its not broken. it scratches a particular itch for a particular group of players i'd say while being completely irrelevant to anyone else.

[kuniqs]

Can't the game just not replace the ziggurat portal with an empty portal, if you complete a zig?

[byrel]

Zigs are essentially a massive challenge to players who enjoy crafting OP heros. There's no particular reason to not allow that fraction of the player-base to be fulfilled, and mega-zigs provide an escalating challenge to keep it interesting longer. It IS a mini-game, but I fail to see what would be accomplished by making it an option victory-lap mode instead of leaving it as is.

And the game design focus for zigs isn't more grinding; that's what the abyss provides already. Zigs provide (ideally) a challenge to the creativity in building your hero to break the game.

Zigs might be able to fill that role better with changes, but I think it's a reasonable goal that doesn't interfere with non-minmaxy players, and should be kept.

[le_nerd]

Sure, allow Mega zigs to be a thing, not a problem. Especially since they are already implemented! But I doubt that any Mega-Zigging playing really enjoys wandering and tabbing pandeamonium to get their Ziggs - that still fits scumming and should be avoided via anti-scumming measures.

[byrel]

Agreed entirely. If there's really a subset of players that enjoys scumming, let them be satisified with running around in abyss:5

[njvack]

Personally, I'd prefer that on Zig:27, the player just gets an item that opens a portal to a new Zig.

I know this is something of a moot point for characters that complete a zig, but an item for "here's a portal out of danger" would be like a scroll of Borg's with no loss of maxhp.

[byrel]

OK, make it create the portal after a delay of 20 turns (with thematic messages.) A much less effective escape.

[archaeo]

Sorry, I should've said "consumable." You use the item, it plops you on a new Zig:1, and it goes away; you can only get another one by finishing another Zig:27. The fact that it's a 1-time escape item really doesn't bother me, since if you can make it to Zig:27, you can win the game at your leisure anyway.

To me, this is the best balance between "cool post-game challenge" and "obnoxious scumming." It requires players who want to subject themselves to multiple Zigs to actually complete them while removing the need to spend ages looking for the next one in Pan. It also creates an "interesting" decision, since you have to decide whether to dive the Zig early for free loot or wait until you can complete it to be sure you get a Zig portal item.

eta: Also, making players finish Zig:27 ensures that the next Zig they face will be harder; currently, it's possible to leave every Zig early and not advance the megazig counter, or whatever it is.

[bananaken]

Agreed entirely. If there's really a subset of players that enjoys scumming, let them be satisified with running around in abyss:5

Is this sarcasm? It's not really an if, just look around on webtiles servers for people doing Zigs or just otherwise taking their time grinding extra skills or collecting unrands.

Here's an example: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/aarujn.html

I find going for megazigs to be fun every now and then, but finding more Zigs past the 1st one is tedious and they don't need to be. There should be no meaningful impact in a 3-rune or 15-rune game if your second Zig and onward were easier to find. I like Abyss too but for different reasons, like scavenging for extra items (specially if you have item detection and Abyss rune already). Diving to Abyss:5 is not quite the same since you don't get the satisfaction of clearing an entire floor and taking your time examining the treasure for that floor.

[Rast]

Make every zig have 243 floors. Last floor at the same difficulty as current final floor of a megazig...