Why is extended still a thing?

[kuniqs]

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/mas ... pas-de-faq

  Code:

Major design goals

       1)  challenging and random gameplay, with skill making a real difference
        2) meaningful decisions (no no-brainers)
        3) avoidance of grinding (no scumming)
        4) gameplay supporting painless interface and newbie support

Minor design goals

       5)  clarity (playability without need for spoilers)
        6) internal consistency
        7) replayability (using branches, species, playing styles and gods)
        8) proper use of out of depth monsters


1 - Only randomness in extended comes from pointless randomness of the Abyss/Pandemonium and Hell effects.
2 - grab some 6-9th level spells or weapons of holy wrath or learn Apportation.
3 - ha ha
4 - extended is a slog, not using autoexplore in Hell is a no-brainer due to the nature of that place. Similary, but to a lesser degree, is in the Abyss and Pan.
5 - unspoiled players have to splat tens or even hundreds of late-game PCs, or savescum, to know what to do.
6 - that's a minor one, but extended (Hells, Pandemonium, the Abyss) exists in a totally different place than the rest.
7 - very little of that. Each branch of Hell, each Pandemonium Lord level and even Abyss is exactly. the. same.
8 - there's nothing out-of-depth at this point. Only danger comes from fighting multiple smiters/hellions/fiends at the same time.

My pet peeve is that extended allows virtually infinite experience. Thus, skill aptitutes do not matter when you reach this point. If the game was limited, skill aptitudes would actually start to matter a bit.

(I gave Ziggurats a pass because they don't contain any rune. Yet, I'm afraid)

[Sar]

Why does infinite XP matter if the only way to get it is doing optional branches that are roughly as hard as the endgame branch???

[dynast]

Well, you could just make it so that the player stops gaining skill experience after xl27, or give the player a limited number of skill points he can learn during the whole game.

Extended is in the game because its optional, it shouldnt be a problem to those not willing to do it, at least it has not been a problem for me when i stopped doing it.

[Shtopit]

(I gave Ziggurats a pass because they don't contain any rune. Yet, I'm afraid)

"You see here the Stardust Rune". Got it? Got it? Eh?

Cough cough - anyway, I am in the "no XP after lvl 27" field. Sar's objection is also pretty good. In general, I am for keeping Hell because it's fun, and for tweaking Pandemonium to make it more varied.

[kuniqs]

Despite being optional, game is still balanced around it.

[Nekoatl]

Aptitudes stop mattering if a player spends sufficiently long grinding in extended, but they can make the difference in whether or not a player can survive long enough to do that. Some players think aptitudes don't matter because they've become skilled enough to usually win even with bad aptitudes, but Crawl is random enough that even the best players die occasionally, and any time a player dies by a narrow margin, it means that they could have survived that situation if they'd had more skill XP to allocate to defenses.

People already tell me I'm too concerned about aptitudes, and while that's debatable, I can say for sure that I would be absolutely obsessive about them if a hard XP cap were implemented. Some of the complaints the OP raised are valid, but I don't see capping XP as a solution. People would still grind for items, even if they couldn't grind for XP. Besides, I've never spent more time grinding XP in extended than it's taken me to find those 4 elusive Pan runes... I'm not saying that no one has, but I am saying that there's a more glaring offender for grind than XP as far as I'm concerned.

[bel]

Despite being optional, game is still balanced around it.

{{citation needed}}. Which features of the game are balanced around extended?

From what I can tell, extended is meant for people who want to enjoy an OP character by playing it a bit more. Ziggurats serve the same function. Fire Storming stuff, pounding everything with statue form or Dragon form, summoning dragons etc. Let people do it if they want to.

[dynast]

but Crawl is random enough that even the best players die occasionally, and any time a player dies by a narrow margin, it means that they could have survived that situation if they'd had more skill XP to allocate to defenses.

Its random enough that it is impossible to measure if 1 extra training in armor or dodging would have saved your life, making skills matter even less. The only skills that arguably matter are the spell schools(because they simply wont work without exp), evo(because they are consumables, so the more exp invested, the bigger the return per charge), stealth and fighting(noticeable returns), everything else is mostly measured by your race, gear or god.

[Nekoatl]

I'm saying there are occasions when an extra level or two in a defensive skill would have been enough to save a character, not that players can accurately identify those occasions. But, the reason we can't identify those occasions is not because of Crawl's randomness... it's because, unlike some other games, Crawl doesn't log the results of every random value that's generated. If we get hit, we don't know if we almost had enough EV to dodge the blow or if we weren't anywhere close... we just know that we didn't have enough. Arguing that we can't identify occasions where having slightly higher skills would have made the difference in no way invalidates my statement that such occasions exist. Likewise, it doesn't support the claim that skills matter less, unless you think subjective perceptions matter but objective reality doesn't (which I would respectfully disagree with).

Btw, the selection of skills you picked out seems completely arbitrary to me. Every skill has a significant effect under one set of circumstances or another.

[removeelyvilon]

1 - Only randomness in extended comes from pointless randomness of the Abyss/Pandemonium and Hell effects.
2 - grab some 6-9th level spells or weapons of holy wrath or learn Apportation.
3 - ha ha
4 - extended is a slog, not using autoexplore in Hell is a no-brainer due to the nature of that place. Similary, but to a lesser degree, is in the Abyss and Pan.
5 - unspoiled players have to splat tens or even hundreds of late-game PCs, or savescum, to know what to do.
6 - that's a minor one, but extended (Hells, Pandemonium, the Abyss) exists in a totally different place than the rest.
7 - very little of that. Each branch of Hell, each Pandemonium Lord level and even Abyss is exactly. the. same.
8 - there's nothing out-of-depth at this point. Only danger comes from fighting multiple smiters/hellions/fiends at the same time.

1. So you are saying that an infinite branch with random floors and with randomized enemies (pan lords) and one with random effects offer no randomness. Okay. Also, abyss is not extended, it's "3rd rune" like vaults and slime.
Also, extended is challenging and skill does make a real difference.
2. There is a plethora of ways to tackle extended. Neither of the listed things is a no-brainer even if they weren't so extremely vague and it's already 3 different things you could use. There's more.
3. There is no point in grinding in extended, on the contrary. It's an unnecessary risk you take for little reward.
4. I agree that pan can drag on for a while and there is no point in exploring hell. This is already on the radar of the devs. (https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... :0.20_plan)
5. The game provides you with information about every monster you encounter, warns you when you leave a pan floor without the rune etc.
6. ???
7. It's obviously not exactly the same because it has different layouts and enemies but I agree there's some overlap between the demons in pan and hell.
8. There is no point in out-of-depth monsters in the final, optional part of the game.

Also the game isn't balanced around extended at all. And the game providing theoretically infinite XP via optional branches isn't problematic because it will not help you win the non-optional game in any way, shape or form. The only reason I don't clear Zot 5 before extended is because I don't want to gimp my character with mutations beforhand. Sometimes I do it anyway.

Shockingly, some people enjoy free, additional, optional content to play in their game!

[ion_frigate]

So you are saying that an infinite branch with random floors and with randomized enemies (pan lords) and one with random effects offer to randomness. Okay.

Um, yes. Have you ever played Oblivion? Dungeons are constantly repopulated with "random" enemies, who all genuinely have random spell sets, equipment, and abilities. These dungeons are boring as hell, only vaguely fun from an "action game" standpoint, and are a far cry from the non-respawning handcrafted enemies found in dungeons in Morrowind.

Procedural content generation is not a golden ticket to a fun and interesting game. RNGs have a strong tendency to produce results that feel very "same-y", and Pan and Abyss are two great examples of that.

[removeelyvilon]

So you are saying that an infinite branch with random floors and with randomized enemies (pan lords) and one with random effects offer to randomness. Okay.

Um, yes. Have you ever played Oblivion? Dungeons are constantly repopulated with "random" enemies, who all genuinely have random spell sets, equipment, and abilities. These dungeons are boring as hell, only vaguely fun from an "action game" standpoint, and are a far cry from the non-respawning handcrafted enemies found in dungeons in Morrowind.

Procedural content generation is not a golden ticket to a fun and interesting game. RNGs have a strong tendency to produce results that feel very "same-y", and Pan and Abyss are two great examples of that.

Well then I am genuinely at a loss what the design philosophy means with "random gameplay".

[dynast]

Well then I am genuinely at a loss what the design philosophy means with "random gameplay".

Its means that randomness will define how you will play each game, creating variety. Which in 99% of such games is horseshit when you can pick a race that is good at doing something specific and a fitting role to narrow it down even more.

[tabstorm]

Out of depth monsters don't really exist by the time you're midway through vaults, imo. At around XL22 you can melee basically any monster to death, or cast fire storm if you are a conjurer.