Proposal for Re-Designing the Hells

[Majang]

The Problem:
The Hells have a clearly defined flavour: an optional extended game branch that forces players to spend a long time in an unpleasant environment before being able to reach the rune and the loot. I read somewhere that it is supposed to be easy to get out, but difficult to get deep. I fully agree with this design philosophy, as it provides an interesting challenge to be overcome for an all-15-rune game. For now, though, I usually decide against going into the Hells, and live with a 11-rune victory, in spite of this theoretically interesting challenge. The problem is that the way this challenge is played out right now is rather uninteresting, and encourages no-brainer choices which totally go against this design philosophy: read a scroll of MM, find the next downstairs, and dive to the branch end as fast a possible. You see reports of people doing this in less than a minute real time. I have seen discussions elsewhere on how this could be remedied, but not much has happened since, also, of course, because the Hells are understandably pretty low on the priority list of the developers.

Outline of a Solution
I guess the seven levels of Hell are a reference to Dante and other traditional ideas about hell in popular culture. Therefore, what I am proposing now might be rejected on grounds that it goes away from such references. My idea is that each hell is exactly two levels deep. The first level is called Gehenna/Cocytus/Dis/Tartarus, and the second level is named after its principal inhabitant: The Realm of Asmodeus/Antaeus/Dispater/Ereshkigal. These Realms will stay exactly as the current 7th level of each hell, in the sense that they are finite and contain exits only to the Vestibule.
The upper levels, though, will be quite different from what they are now. What should stay the same is the set of monsters, the mysterious effects of hell, the flavour and general layout of the level. What changes is that this upper level is infinite, similar to the abyss, in the following ways:

• You see your LOS, but you can only remember the tiles in a 20-tile square around you.

• Tiles that you forget (by walking towards the other side of the screen) are subject to change.

• Unlike in the Abyss, dungeon features on your map (the remembered area) are not subject to change.

• At the beginning, you start on an exit towards the Vestibule.

• No entry-points to the Realm of Foo are available at the outset.

• Whenever you forget the exit to the Vestibule, a new exit is created somewhere on the map (not necessarily in LOS).

• An entry-point to the Realm of Foo is only created after slaying a minimum of 150 monsters, and is generated randomly with the probability increasing with higher slain monster numbers. The entry-point to the Realm of Foo will be generated under the feet of the player. This is quite similar to exit-generation in the Abyss.

• The monster counter is not reset if the player leaves for refreshments in the Vestibule, so repeated returns to the particular hell will contribute towards the generation of an entry-point to the Realm of Foo. Each hell has a separate counter.

• Once an entry-point to the Realm of Foo is created, the monster counter is reset to Zero. This means that if the player does not use the entry-point, but leaves to the Vestibule, s/he will have to start over again. The same is true if s/he enters the Realm, but does not get the rune, and leaves prematurely instead.

Effects of this Proposal
This proposal eliminates the no-brainer diving strategy, but forces the player to be exposed for a significant time to the effects of hell, in this way meeting the above design philosophies of the hells. The infinite nature of the upper level of each hell (without the amount of chaos generated in the Abyss) might also go along with other popular perceptions of hell. The placement of a guaranteed exit to the Vestibule somewhere on the remembered map still makes it relatively easy to leave. The random placement of entry points to the Realm of Foo puts some interesting choices in front of the player, who by that time has probably been significantly weakened by the effects of Hell. He can choose to enter in a weakened state, or to leave for refreshment of stats, to start over again. I believe this would turn the hells from a quick dive or endless grind into a very interesting set of choices to be made by the player, with always an easy way out to safety.

Some Problems
The main problem that comes to my mind right now would be the semi-chaotic nature of the upper level. At least Gehenna and Dis are characterized by some room-like structures, and it would be good to keep that. This means that somehow a way must be found that rooms are forgotten only when the room completely disappears from the remembered area. Other points of discussion might be the number of monsters to be slain before earliest generation of an entry point.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Maybe just disable scrolls of magic mapping on all hell floors except the last one? Or maybe on last one too.

Edit. Your proposal will remove ability to steal runes without killing any monsters (Sp of Ashenzari)

Edit2. So removal of magic mapping will fix "easy dive" aspect while replacing all hell monsters with durable summons will fix "farm for XP and items" aspect.

[Magipi]

I don't get it, who has so many magic mapping scrolls to use them on Hell 1-6 floors? This sounds weird.

[Majang]

I don't get it, who has so many magic mapping scrolls to use them on Hell 1-6 floors? This sounds weird.

I certainly had several times. Where else do you really need them? Maybe on a Pan Boss level, and in the Lair side-branch ends. And to find timed portals. Otherwise experienced players can well do without them, and they are not that infrequent.
In the Hells, often a downstairs is in LOS when you enter a new level, so you don't need them for all 28 levels, but maybe for 20.
Also, for most players we are talking about the end of the game. You know how many mapping scrolls you have by that time, and you are going to burn through what you have (leave one for each level 7).

[Majang]

Maybe just disable scrolls of magic mapping on all hell floors except the last one? Or maybe on last one too.

I find that problematic from a flavour point of view. Why should Scrolls of Magic Mapping not work in a particular branch? It does not work in Abyss, because it is infinite and random, but as it stands we don't have this in the Hells right now.

Your proposal will remove ability to steal runes without killing any monsters (Sp of Ashenzari)

Probably true. So this character really shouldn't go there, like many others.

Replacing all hell monsters with durable summons will fix "farm for XP and items" aspect.

One of the not so terrible features of the hells right now is that killing there has religious effects, such as Makhleb-HP or Vehumet-MP restoration. Also Kiku's corpses would probably be disabled, and lots of Gods would stop piety increase. Take all that out, and the hells would become a truly horrible place for everyone. This is not what I am advocating for.

[VeryAngryFelid]

One of the not so terrible features of the hells right now is that killing there has religious effects, such as Makhleb-HP or Vehumet-MP restoration. Also Kiku's corpses would probably be disabled, and lots of Gods would stop piety increase. Take all that out, and the hells would become a truly horrible place for everyone. This is not what I am advocating for.

I didn't mean to remove piety, corpses or HP/MP on kills, just remove XP and items. If someone wants to get TSO's piety at the cost of suffering from hell effects and waste of consumables, it's completely fine IMHO. Maybe it is not how durable summons work currently, then we will need to introduce new type of summons.

I think it can make some sense to disable magic mapping from flavor point of view, it's Hell after all.

[Majang]

Maybe it is not how durable summons work currently, then we will need to introduce new type of summons.

Yes, in this way I could live with it. But honestly, does anyone ever go to Hell to farm for XP and items? Pan is a much better place for this.

[Aean]

One of the major issues I see here is that it's a design that encourages using tedious behavior to game the system. With this design, a player can game the system by keeping track of one's kills and dipping into and out of Gehenna/etc. Drop in, kill monsters until you start losing a bit of health, leave, repeat.

So, say, enter Tartarus, kill 30 monsters, get repeatedly tormented, leave, heal. Enter again, kill 50 monsters, get repeatedly hellfired, leave, heal. Repeat. When you're at or near 150, leave to heal as soon as you take a couple hits. So you end up at 150 diving in, killing 5 monsters, and then either seeing the entrance and diving, or retreating to heal.

Seems like the solution there would be to make the kills only cumulative within a single trip (more like Abyss), but even then you do force far more combat than anywhere else in the game. Though I suppose if you added very rare portals to the Realm of Foo as well, that could work...like the Abyss, you could get stairs through killing, or finding one.

[Majang]

I was hoping to counteract your first objection by having the monster-slay counter only define the minimum, so that you would not really know when exactly the entry point spawns. But I guess someone not put off by extreme tedium might then hop in for smaller and smaller stints. Healing, though, is only the smallest of needs you have when inside the hells. Stat reductions are much more difficult to address than just a short trip to the Vestibule. You would have to work them off in Pandemonium for a while...

I like your idea about throwing in ultra-rare entry points not spawned by the killing counter, just like in the Abyss. The generation could be triggered by having explored so and so many new tiles (say, 5000). That would encourage a more exploratory behaviour in the hells, instead of waiting for all the enemies come to you on the same spot.

[pedritolo]

Your proposal will remove ability to steal runes without killing any monsters (Sp of Ashenzari)

Probably true. So this character really shouldn't go there, like many others.

Sorry, I don't think that's a fair approach. Some of us do enjoy playing stealthy chars even through the extended game.

[gameguard]

i think hell is completely fine. Its pan that is mind bogglingly stupid. How many maps do you have to go through to get the runes?

[Majang]

Your proposal will remove ability to steal runes without killing any monsters (Sp of Ashenzari)

Probably true. So this character really shouldn't go there, like many others.

Sorry, I don't think that's a fair approach. Some of us do enjoy playing stealthy chars even through the extended game.

Seriously, would you take a spriggan cloak-and-dagger character into the new Tomb? Probably only in a game where you'd fully expect to die.

[stickyfingers]

Seriously, would you take a spriggan cloak-and-dagger character into the new Tomb? Probably only in a game where you'd fully expect to die.

Sure you can do that. Look here for example: http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/Sp ... 170322.txt

I don't get it, who has so many magic mapping scrolls to use them on Hell 1-6 floors? This sounds weird.

My recent OgEE had more that 20 when it started doing hells. I used them if there was no staircase found after a bit of exploration, and then I also mapped all 5 Zot levels, and still there were 4 left around (http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/st ... 212034.txt, also the lst file).

[pedritolo]

Seriously, would you take a spriggan cloak-and-dagger character into the new Tomb? Probably only in a game where you'd fully expect to die.

Sure I've done it several times before ( < 0.20) and I could do it again in 0.20; the new tomb's layout isn't problematic in this particular case - lack of tele and/or ctele is. Same goes for hell and pan runes. Well sure I fully expect to die with a significantly high %. But it certainly can be done and that's how you turn speedrun a sp, for example.

[Majang]

i think hell is completely fine. Its pan that is mind bogglingly stupid. How many maps do you have to go through to get the runes?

Yes, hells are fine from a player's perspective, because it is very easy to overcome the challenge that is supposed to make this branch interesting. From a game-design perspective, though, this is very unsatisfactory. That's what I want to address.
I share your misgivings about Pan, though. Maybe there should be a maximum of levels after which the remaining rune levels are forced. But that would be for a different discussion.

[Phaedo]

Literally, if you think Pan is too long, it's fixable by tweaking a couple of variables.

I'm not convinced by Hell RN, but I'm not convinced by this proposal either. I think one of my biggest objections is simply that the geometry of the levels is unremittingly boring. Having no items around just makes this worse.

[Majang]

Granted, my proposal would not fix that.

[TonberryJam]

I think Hell's should be made more difficult. And, it should be a nightmare to navigate. Fomicide's of the Shining One already have the most easiest time in Hell. Shaft to the bottom, summon an Angel. Summon more Angels at the boss. Done. Have a little throw/x-bow/sling trained so you don't have to walk upto the damnation casters and you're all set.

I think the problem with the Hells is that all the floors are similar in nature. They should get more difficult the further you dive down. As in, tougher monsters should appear the closer you get to the bottom.

[Majang]

My above proposal would solve the formicide problem, wouldn't it?