Burn the Temple down

[minstrel]

Just a thought to make god choice & progression a little less dull/predictable and strengthen the Crawl theme of adapting to what the dungeon gives you:

Each game picks 10 gods at random. CTRL-O god list is replaced by 10 "??????"'s initially, filled in as the player finds a shrine. Ecumenical temple (maybe) disappears entirely. I believe this is similar to how very old versions worked.

Picking the first shrine you can work with gets a little more tempting (a lot more if Temple goes bye bye). Strong players tend to play this way anyway and it's good behavior to encourage with newer ones.

Predictable progression paths like Okawau/Trog -> TSO/Zin mostly go away.

The game is strengthened by becoming both more challenging and more varied.

Some exceptions for deep dwarves might have to be added (guarantee at least one god with healing abilities), but they're such a strong species that I'm not even sure that's necessary.

Flame away!

[Sprucery]

I support removing the Temple, but all gods should be available at some point. When I've won all backgrounds I want to win the remaining gods and I would hate to play a game and find out I can't pick any of the gods I haven't won with yet. Just guarantee all altars in D (yes, Jiyva too).

[PowerOfKaishin]

This game is far too long (10 to 20 hours?) to force the player into a god they don't like.

Also this just encourages scumming.

[Shard1697]

A 3 rune game does not normally take 10+ hours, even if you're new.

[minstrel]

I support removing the Temple, but all gods should be available at some point. When I've won all backgrounds I want to win the remaining gods and I would hate to play a game and find out I can't pick any of the gods I haven't won with yet. Just guarantee all altars in D (yes, Jiyva too).

I could see that. You're still left with a choice to pick an early altar or hope you'll come across another later. And the risk of waiting increases a lot more when you know you won't necessarily be able to find it by (relatively safe) D7.

This game is far too long (10 to 20 hours?) to force the player into a god they don't like.

My suggestion is to treat gods much like any other resource. There's no guarantee you get a given weapon or spell by a certain dungeon level and a player with his or her heart set on one specific god needs to adapt more.

If a choice of 5-6 altars by D7 or so (assuming some weighting to put some near the top) doesn't leave any enjoyable gods for most players available, there's a problem with god design.

Also this just encourages scumming.

I only see that in the case of players trying to create a narrowly focused build for speed diving, which is ridiculously repetitive anyway given the risks.

[Arrhythmia]

If a choice of 5-6 altars by D7 or so (assuming some weighting to put some near the top) doesn't leave any enjoyable gods for most players available, there's a problem with god design.

I don't think that's true; people can irrationally like/dislike all the gods they want to. Sif and Oka are both fine gods that lots of people enjoy playing, but I don't really like to play Sif at all.

[minstrel]

I don't think that's true; people can irrationally like/dislike all the gods they want to. Sif and Oka are both fine gods that lots of people enjoy playing, but I don't really like to play Sif at all.

I agree. However, my suggestion relates to how far we need to go to accommodate everyone's likes and dislikes. Crawl doesn't ensure a good weapon of every sort early in the game, yet this isn't an issue. From what's available in the early dungeon, there's pretty much always something I will have fun using, even if I had really been hoping to play an axe-wielder. I think the only reason we think of the availability of every god early on as a necessity is because that's what we're used to. While there are gods I'd skip over even if they were strong/optimal (Lucy, for example), I'm hard pressed to think of a set of 6 where I'd like none of them.

To clarify: I'm on board with Sprucery's modification, making all altars available eventually, so I'm not saying you'd be outright denied your god. It would mirror the tradeoffs in holding out for a good weapon of your choice: you can adapt to what shows up early, and maybe not play the exact game you had hoped, or wait for something later and pay the tradeoff cost in lost XP or Piety/Wrath to switch. It's a non-trivial choice which adds variety to the game.

[Brannock]

I don't have an opinion on whether all gods should be guaranteed in any given game, but I think it'd be a mistake to remove the Temple itself. It's an important and exciting progression marker, especially for newer players. "Can consistently reach the Temple" is a good halfway point between "Totally new" and "Can consistently reach the Lair".

[njvack]

A 3 rune game does not normally take 10+ hours, even if you're new.

I'm not new by any means, but my wins still clock in at 8+ hours. YES OKAY I AM TERRIBLE AT CRAWL

[dpeg]

Before the first "new" temple gods were added (Fedhas and Cheibriados for 0.6), we had exactly this discussion: what to do with the Ecumenical Altar (then at 12 gods). In fact, the inability to reach a concensus is why the gods added before that were non-Temple ones (Lugonu 0.2 and Beogh 0.3). One obvious idea was to enhance the Temple each time a god is added, but I didn't want (for one thing because I didn't feel like updating the bazillion temple maps all the time).

Someone, Lemuel in fact, suggested scrapping the Temple branch and only rely on altar spawning -- this is pretty close to the OP. This was unthinkable back then and I am pretty sure this wouldn't fly with the current devteam either.

What we have now is a solution in between: the range of the overflow altars (currently D:3-9) could be changed in either direction. Sometimes this is brought up but I don't think anything will happen there. Personally, I wouldn't mind extending the range to D:3-11. Allowing access to all temple gods is mandatory to me, but but I can see making early altars more attractive.

[tabstorm]

I only see that in the case of players trying to create a narrowly focused build for speed diving, which is ridiculously repetitive anyway given the risks.

You do realize that many people do this because the normal game is so easy that there's not a lot of motivation to play normally? Sometimes people want to play a particular god for the sake of it, you know.

[Quazifuji]

I only see that in the case of players trying to create a narrowly focused build for speed diving, which is ridiculously repetitive anyway given the risks.

You do realize that many people do this because the normal game is so easy that there's not a lot of motivation to play normally? Sometimes people want to play a particular god for the sake of it, you know.

How much time has the average person who considers the game so easy spent playing the game? Because I'm under the impression that many consider the game quite hard.

[PleasingFungus]

A 3 rune game does not normally take 10+ hours, even if you're new.

i don't think 10+ hour games are that uncommon. i had quite a few when i was newer to the game: a, b, c, d...

i am very far from the slowest player i know, too.

[Shard1697]

Well, maybe I'm abnormal-but I would still assume average 3 rune win time(and 'new player' average 3 rune win time) is below 10 hours-and the original post I was replying to had 10 as minimum time!

[chequers]

Keep the temple as a fixed floor around d:3-7 because the layouts are beautiful, and it would be a shame to lose them. Just spawn 10 altars like OP suggests. No overflow altars (I'd be sad to lose some of these, but less-sad than losing temple).

[Sprucery]

Keep the temple as a fixed floor around d:3-7 because the layouts are beautiful, and it would be a shame to lose them.

The layouts are beautiful, I agree. I guess it doesn't look like the Temple is going anywhere, but if it did, maybe the layouts could be reused somewhere, like a new portal vault or something?

[njvack]

I can see making early altars more attractive.

Early altars are already pretty attractive — an okay god now is stronger than a chance of a better god later. It's pretty rare that I make it to temple without a god now; there are enough gods that would work okay with any given character that I usually find one before. Plus, the 'choose the first god that might be okay' conduct gets me to play gods I normally wouldn't.

I don't know that I have any particular thought on this other than "the temple is neat but it seems way less important to me than it did when I was starting out."

[tabstorm]

I can see making early altars more attractive.

The first non-harmful altar you find is usually the correct one to worship at, unless your character is extremely bad, in which case you are pretty much waiting for Trog, Fedhas, Kiku, Nemelex, Gozag. Otherwise, while picking the first non-harmful altar is optimal in some sense, in practice you can just wait for whatever god you want to worship. You are not going to die because of your failure to choose a god in this scenario.

[johlstei]

Reduce the temple from ~12 gods to 5. That adds to the desirable "adapt to what you find" notion from the OP while preserving the new player milestone.

[Shtopit]

I think the dungeon is just too large to give a good reason for something like this. Expanding the range of overflow altars is OK for me, but making them not appear? I don't like it.

[Leszczynek]

I know for some jaded veterans playing Crawl is just grinding your win percentage with random rolls out of boredom, but there are really people, and quite a lot of them too, who decide that this time they want to play a Naga of Chei, an Octopode of Gozag or a Demonspawn of Yred and taking away the certainty of god choice available before descending to the lower Dungeon and its branches only means they just spent anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes of their time and need to reroll... except they don't even know if the reroll will have the god of their choice spawned as well!

If you really want to add unpredictability, just add the random god altar to the Temple instead. You can move Temple down, make less gods guaranteed in it or even remove it if you really have to (though I don't think it would make the game better), but I can't see not guaranteeing all gods to appear in the game as anything close to a good idea.

And if you don't believe me, imagine a different situation - you start as a "changeling" with some generic stats and need to reach a certain spawn place to choose your actual race, except the place might not be in your game. Did you want to play a Deep Elf? Ooops too bad heh heh have a Human instead, maybe even a Draconian if you're lucky, we're all out of elves for this evening buddy.

[johlstei]

And if you don't believe me, imagine a different situation - you start as a "changeling" with some generic stats and need to reach a certain spawn place to choose your actual race, except the place might not be in your game. Did you want to play a Deep Elf? Ooops too bad heh heh have a Human instead, maybe even a Draconian if you're lucky, we're all out of elves for this evening buddy.

I'd try it. It misses the point that gods are purposely an in-game decision to be made situationally. If they weren't you'd just pick one at chargen(as you seem to suggest you do out of game), so I don't think it's a valid comparison. But I'd play it.

Deciding what should be a in-game vs out-of-game choice is nontrivial and there's room in the design-space for both things. Gods are currently the former and I don't think your argument is valid as long as you aren't also proposing to change that.

[PleasingFungus]

as someone else noted in a thread a few weeks back, gods are sometimes an in-game choice, sometimes an out-of-game choice, sometimes a choice you make to win, sometimes a choice you make for variety. their design is in a confused place, and it's natural for people to be thrown off by that.

going back to the original topic of the thread: this exact suggestion is on the 'won't do' list precisely because it was argued to death many years ago. i don't think anything's changed in that regard.

[goodcoolguy]

A couple of things:

1. The fact that speedrunning involves so much scumming for good altars indicates there's a problem with the design of gods. On one side you've got this effectively infinite dimensional design space, on the other certain metrics you can use to balance them to give similar in-game performance, e.g. typical time taken playing them in terms of turns and real time, etc. Taking a few such metrics seriously does not result in a loss of degrees of freedom on the design side, but it sure improves playability.

2. The fact that people set out to take a particular god at the beginning of the game is part of the problem and limited god choice addresses it. I mean, you don't hear a lot of people saying "You know, I really want to play a character that has gold dragon armor when it enters lair. I don't see why I can't have it on my first try. Random item generation in crawl just encourages scumming." This would be pretty silly, even if it is a little true if you look at how speedrunning works. Likewise, in a game where you get 10 out 20-something gods, it's far less sensible to start scum for your favorite god -- and let's be real here, this is what people who are set on a god are doing most of the time.

[yesno]

I support removing the Temple, but all gods should be available at some point. When I've won all backgrounds I want to win the remaining gods and I would hate to play a game and find out I can't pick any of the gods I haven't won with yet. Just guarantee all altars in D (yes, Jiyva too).

i don't think it makes sense to structure the game around a minority of completionists. chat commands like polytheist shouldn't ever be a factor in crawl's design

[Shard1697]

Why not? Doing things like trying to win the game with all the different gods is a fun way to get more replayability out of the game.

[dpeg]

goodcoolguy: No. Speedrunning should not affect design decisions. It's okay if people do it, and it is pretty clear that serious speedrunning attempts will need measures that are extreme (by whatever measure).

There is no design problem with "people" fixing their god pre-game. This is similar to fixing the build in advance. As developers, we want to encourage flexibility, and so it is desirable if inflexibility is punished and flexibility is rewarded. We can discuss how to strengthen this. The fact that some players (not "people") do otherwise is no indication -- in either direction.

[yesno]

Why not? Doing things like trying to win the game with all the different gods is a fun way to get more replayability out of the game.

because only a tiny fraction of the people who play crawl will ever play so obsessively that they struggle to get more replayability out of it, and only a fraction of that fraction will have the completionist instinct required to push them toward gaining trophies at the expense of considering the variety per game of crawl

[minstrel]

dpeg and PF, thanks for the historical perspective on this. It's good to know the balance of opinion on the current dev team. I think it's helpful to bring up subjects from time to time even if they're a current won't do - things do change and sometimes decisions that seemed inviolable turn out to have little resonance now.

To add a little of my own history: the reason I originally brought up the subject is that, after playing crawl on and off for 6ish years, I finally took the general advice from veteran players to heart and started picking early altars, as long as the god was feasible and enjoyable. I've found my games have improved drastically as a result, so much so that I wish the game had pushed me to that realization earlier.

But some gods are so obviously strong and require so little alteration in tactics, while others take some figuring out and adaptation to realize how good (and fun) they are that they set up antipatterns. Once you get good enough at making it to D7, there isn't much incentive to branch out. On top of that, it's hard to appreciate how much difference a few early dungeon levels worth of piety in a slightly sub-optimal god makes over a slightly more optimal, but later acquired one. If the Temple hadn't been there, I think I would have come to this realization a lot earlier.

Now I'm not saying that players shouldn't have some responsibility to improve their own game (assuming they care to - hey, just "having fun losing" is fine with me, I play Dwarf Fortress after all), but where possible and appropriate, I feel it's a good design decision to have the game nudge the player toward winning patterns.

Regarding limiting gods per game or including all, but spaced out throughout D, I'd play a game with either, but I also think either one accomplishes the goal above of pushing players to try out new gods and learn strategic lessons. If you're waiting until D13 to find an altar of Trog, you'll very quickly learn that you should have picked something else earlier. (And if you're good enough to be trying for a polytheist accomplishment, you can probably manage to switch or make it anyway)

Last thought before I get so long winded that I'm vulnerable to Airstrike - I'd not necessarily against picking gods right off the bat, and I'd actually rather choose a god at character select than the current Temple system. The status quo forces players to get invested a little in their character before choosing a god, and it's easy to get stuck in the trap of picking Trog/Oka/SIf/etc when the alternative is slogging through D1-(5-7) multiple times just to try a new one out. Likewise, the existing Zealot backgrounds reinforce that (Trog is crazy strong, Lugonu is difficult for beginners, and Xom is ... Xom). I'd probably have tried out a lot of other gods earlier had they been available right from the create screen.

Ending thesis statement: the existing system is a compromise that promotes neither flexibility, nor strong play.

[Siegurt]

A couple of things:

1. The fact that speedrunning involves so much scumming for good altars indicates there's a problem with the design of gods. On one side you've got this effectively infinite dimensional design space, on the other certain metrics you can use to balance them to give similar in-game performance, e.g. typical time taken playing them in terms of turns and real time, etc. Taking a few such metrics seriously does not result in a loss of degrees of freedom on the design side, but it sure improves playability.

I am not sure how "The fact that speedrunning involves so much scumming for good altars indicates there's a problem with the design of gods." Follows, if speedrunning is considered an aberrant play style (which the devs have made it fairly clear it is) then all this indicates is that some gods are disproportionally good for speed runnning, there is no clear correlation between speedrunner god scumming and god design for the game as a whole.

It *might* be a bit of supporting evidence if you had a cohesive argument for non-abberant games, which you might have, you just haven't made it here.

I do agree that taking speed running into account doesn't necessarily restrict design decisions. But like all things, you have to prioritize, if making speed running more enjoyable makes the rest of the play styles less fun, then speed running considerations will lose. I am not sure whether they do or not in this case.

2. The fact that people set out to take a particular god at the beginning of the game is part of the problem and limited god choice addresses it. I mean, you don't hear a lot of people saying "You know, I really want to play a character that has gold dragon armor when it enters lair. I don't see why I can't have it on my first try. Random item generation in crawl just encourages scumming." This would be pretty silly, even if it is a little true if you look at how speedrunning works. Likewise, in a game where you get 10 out 20-something gods, it's far less sensible to start scum for your favorite god -- and let's be real here, this is what people who are set on a god are doing most of the time.

Personally, when i am set on a particular god (which for me happens only for me when I'm wanting to play with some god aspect particularly in an experimental sort of way) I just play godless until I find the appropriate altar, I don't start scum, that might be the exception, but I don't have any evidence that start scumming for their god is what "people who are set on a god are doing most of the time", do you? And if you do can you present it?

[sanka]

I guess a common middle ground would be to just move the temple to the D11-D14 range and ensure that at least 8 overflow altars are generated before D7.

[goodcoolguy]

A couple of things:

1. The fact that speedrunning involves so much scumming for good altars indicates there's a problem with the design of gods. On one side you've got this effectively infinite dimensional design space, on the other certain metrics you can use to balance them to give similar in-game performance, e.g. typical time taken playing them in terms of turns and real time, etc. Taking a few such metrics seriously does not result in a loss of degrees of freedom on the design side, but it sure improves playability.

I am not sure how "The fact that speedrunning involves so much scumming for good altars indicates there's a problem with the design of gods." Follows, if speedrunning is considered an aberrant play style (which the devs have made it fairly clear it is) then all this indicates is that some gods are disproportionally good for speed runnning, there is no clear correlation between speedrunner god scumming and god design for the game as a whole.

It *might* be a bit of supporting evidence if you had a cohesive argument for non-abberant games, which you might have, you just haven't made it here.

I do agree that taking speed running into account doesn't necessarily restrict design decisions. But like all things, you have to prioritize, if making speed running more enjoyable makes the rest of the play styles less fun, then speed running considerations will lose. I am not sure whether they do or not in this case.

This is hilarious. I can't believe you wrote this much pretending the second and third sentences don't exist to conclude by agreeing with them.

Here's something to chew on: Maybe the reason speedrunning is "aberrant" play in crawl is deliberate design decisions made by guys like dpeg, not the perverseness of players or some fundamental truth of game design.

[chequers]

In what sort of game does speedrunning not result in "aberrant" play? I suggest the only way any game takes speedrunning into account is by using it to find weird extreme exploits *cough* breadswinging *cough*

[dpeg]

In what sort of game does speedrunning not result in "aberrant" play? I suggest the only way any game takes speedrunning into account is by using it to find weird extreme exploits *cough* breadswinging *cough*

Perhaps taken into account a little bit more (but not much). It is concensus on ##crawl-dev that speedrunning (or other challenges, conducts, handicaps) shouldn't matter for "mainline" Crawl.

I guess a common middle ground would be to just move the temple to the D11-D14 range and ensure that at least 8 overflow altars are generated before D7.

This is a middle ground, but it has several drawbacks: (a) the Temple becomes something of a newbie trap, because you're always better advised to pick one of the early floating altars. Moreover, the Temple loses its canonical position (as a grade of player level). It does achieve something: instead of picking one god out of many at once, you have a delayed decision: "This altar, or hold out for the next one?" I like that a lot, and it's the reason why overflow altars were invented in the first place.
By the way,a different middle ground would be this: keep depths of overflow altars and the Temple as now, but lower the expected value of Temple altars.

[yesno]

even if you kept spawning altars at the same rate i would rather see them in dungeon than temple, because the temple is usually boring, and mashes all the gods together (you could replace it by a special altar that gives you a list of every god that would have been in temple and you wouldn't lose anything imo), and altar vaults are often pretty cool and give you a feel for the deity placed there.

[Psieye]

the range of the overflow altars (currently D:3-9) could be changed in either direction. Sometimes this is brought up but I don't think anything will happen there. Personally, I wouldn't mind extending the range to D:3-11. Allowing access to all temple gods is mandatory to me, but but I can see making early altars more attractive.

a delayed decision: "This altar, or hold out for the next one?" I like that a lot, and it's the reason why overflow altars were invented in the first place.
By the way,a different middle ground would be this: keep depths of overflow altars and the Temple as now, but lower the expected value of Temple altars.

My current take on an altar experiment:
- Overflow range = D:3-13 (skewed so more are earlier than later)
- Temple range = D:6-7
- Temple altar count = 8-12 (insert random altars into existing layouts to avoid scrapping the maps)

I feel the possibility of Temple spawning on D:4 undermines the value of a D:3 altar.

even if you kept spawning altars at the same rate i would rather see them in dungeon than temple, because the temple is usually boring, and mashes all the gods together (you could replace it by a special altar that gives you a list of every god that would have been in temple and you wouldn't lose anything imo), and altar vaults are often pretty cool and give you a feel for the deity placed there.

That sounds like "Feature request: build Temple layouts like Vaults layouts - mini-vaults inserted into set positions". If it is, then it's a nice-to-have but personally I'm ok with Temple shoving everyone together.

[goodcoolguy]

In what sort of game does speedrunning not result in "aberrant" play? I suggest the only way any game takes speedrunning into account is by using it to find weird extreme exploits *cough* breadswinging *cough*

Of course most authors/companies just drop a game and laugh their way to the bank. The unusual thing is having the opportunity to interact with people who delve so deeply into a game and to learn from what they do, but instead dismiss them as some kind of deviants.

Anyway, the point being deflected here is that crawl gods are wildly unbalanced and the usual defense that this is somehow necessary to maintain variety or whatever just doesn't wash.

[VeryAngryFelid]

No, gods are a replacement for difficulty levels (along with species and background). Taking the most OP combos (read: playing at the easiest difficulty level), farming for lucky items/events and gaming the system is what speedrunning mostly is (and crawl is not unique here). Crawl has some "features" (I'd call them bugs actually) which are heavily used by speedrunners (breadswinging, move speed does not affect turn count, Apportation works with runes, scrolls of blinking work on rune/orb floors etc.)

[goodcoolguy]

Wow, way to evade the block, bud.

In-game decisions are not difficulty settings. If you don't choose it in the start up sequence, it's not a difficulty setting.

[yesno]

even if you kept spawning altars at the same rate i would rather see them in dungeon than temple, because the temple is usually boring, and mashes all the gods together (you could replace it by a special altar that gives you a list of every god that would have been in temple and you wouldn't lose anything imo), and altar vaults are often pretty cool and give you a feel for the deity placed there.

That sounds like "Feature request: build Temple layouts like Vaults layouts - mini-vaults inserted into set positions". If it is, then it's a nice-to-have but personally I'm ok with Temple shoving everyone together.

no, it's exactly what i said: even if you didn't want to lower amount of altar spawn in a game, you should still remove temple, and compensate by increasing spawn rate of altar mini vaults in dungeon (and branches and portals)

[Siegurt]

This is hilarious. I can't believe you wrote this much pretending the second and third sentences don't exist to conclude by agreeing with them.

My point was that the second and third sentences don't provide evidence for the first.

"It would not be inherently limiting to your design" doesn't prove that you should do something, only that "limiting design" isn't a reason not to.

Here's something to chew on: Maybe the reason speedrunning is "aberrant" play in crawl is deliberate design decisions made by guys like dpeg, not the perverseness of players or some fundamental truth of game design.

Of course, all design decisions are decisions made by designers that is a tautology.

When creating a game that is intended to be fun, you figure out what *you* think is fun, and design to it. Of course there will be people with a different idea of what is fun. I am sure someone thinks original is fun to dig out every square of every level, does that mean the game developers should develop *to* such an audience? Obviously not, if that was the intended audience we would probably want to call it like "mining simulator" or something.

If you feel that speed running should not be considered aberrant, and should be given equal measure or perhaps more weight when designing crawl, feel free to do so, but i don't think you will find much support.

The crux of this whole stupid crap is that it is useless to use speedrunning to justify anything related to game design as long as it is not considered part of the target audience, if you want to lobby for changing that design paradigm, feel free to do so, but using it as a pillar to support other arguments when it's presently not itself accepted is counterproductive, and just mires you in endless off topic discussions which have nothing to do with your objective.

[and into]

A lot of gods have been added over the years and (I think?) incidence of overflow altars was at some point(s) increased. So while the Temple might remain a kind of benchmark for new players as the first "branch" they try to get to reliably, its actual impact in the game has diminished in practice. That's already happened.

I remember back in 0.5/0.6, it was fairly uncommon to get an altar you wanted before Temple. Thus getting to the ET was a big deal with any character that was not a demigod and didn't start off with a god already. (Of course, there used to be quite a few more "zealot" backgrounds back then, too.) This has changed slowly over time. It is now pretty common for me to kneel at one altar or the other before I get to the Temple.

What should one do with this information in terms of design? I dunno. But other changes to Crawl over more than ten versions of stable releases have already diminished the actual gameplay importance of the Temple compared to when I started playing.

[ximxim]

Replacing the current temple with a temple "branch" made out of altar vaults could be fun. Or just a regular level special-cased to contain a lot of altar vaults. That way there's still a "temple" to aim for, but a more interesting and more thematic one.

(Don't get me wrong, the current temple layouts are great and very well made, just not very interactive compared to most temple vaults).

[njvack]

But other changes to Crawl over more than ten versions of stable releases have already diminished the actual gameplay importance of the Temple compared to when I started playing.

I'll also suggest that you've probably gotten better at Crawl since then and are maybe more willing to take a variety of gods than you are to hold out for a particular one. I know that's true for me, at least.

[PleasingFungus]

Here's something to chew on: Maybe the reason speedrunning is "aberrant" play in crawl is deliberate design decisions made by guys like dpeg, not the perverseness of players or some fundamental truth of game design.

If you wanted speedrunning to be a common playstyle in crawl, you would have to make winning the game much, much, much easier. The great majority of players have not won even once.

In-game decisions are not difficulty settings. If you don't choose it in the start up sequence, it's not a difficulty setting.

I don't know if I'd call crawl gods a difficulty setting, but it's certainly possible to have difficulty settings appear over the course of play. Here's a good article on the subject.


Aside: your tone is extremely aggressive, goodcoolguy, and I think you'll have a much more constructive experience here if you try to moderate yourself a little. Saying that other posters' arguments are "hilarious" and otherwise condescending to them ("bud") may be fun, but it also makes you look like a jackass.

[goodcoolguy]

You're right, these guys have been unfailingly polite and I have been nothing but rude. Gotta think about the Discourse.

[Shtopit]

If the increase of god numbers has made the Temple less relevant, why not to redesign the Temple to hold 30%-50% more altars than it does right now?

[dpeg]

Shtopit: The average number of Temple altars has steadily gone up, simply because new temple maps have been added that feature the (then) maximal number of gods.

[duvessa]

Sometimes I wonder if the Dungeon Master group has an exclusive button in the post editor that automatically generates a tone argument.

[PleasingFungus]

If the increase of god numbers has made the Temple less relevant, why not to redesign the Temple to hold 30%-50% more altars than it does right now?

there was a big Temple rebalance about two months ago, in fact.

You're right, these guys have been unfailingly polite and I have been nothing but rude. Gotta think about the Discourse.

if you feel you are being treated unfairly, you can complain to a moderator, or you can leave. your current approach is not helping.