Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1131
Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03
Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.
Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1131
Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03
Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1131
Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03
Blades Runner
Posts: 593
Joined: Tuesday, 11th December 2018, 19:14
Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1131
Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03
VeryAngryFelid wrote:just make every aptitude -8 and speed 50 auts per move. Only partially a joke.
Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 4432
Joined: Friday, 8th May 2015, 17:51
sanka wrote:Oh, so you think that for beginners, playing a MiBe, Juggernaut is a very hard monster? What do you think about caustic shrikes then?
Lair Larrikin
Posts: 23
Joined: Saturday, 6th April 2019, 23:22
tealizard wrote:As far as the shaft effect goes, the first thing that happens to a player when they start the game is they get "shafted" into d:1, i.e. if they do not fight their way out of the immediate vicinity of the entrance, they lose the game. Incidentally, this is where the vast majority of unwinnable game scenarios happen. It's also the site of some of the most interesting gameplay in the game. But because of the way it is presented to the player, a new player is unlikely to think of it the way I have described it here. And indeed, I've only ever seen fairly experienced players talk about the importance of the dungeon entrance. Therefore I doubt that new players have a hard time accepting the dungeon entrance or that they would have a hard time accepting a similar arrangement on every floor. People cling to stairs because it is what they know, not because they have an innate intuition that they should be able to cheez their way through the game with stairs.
What people actually balk at is the trap mechanism applied to the shaft effect. This is because it cuts against the sense of what is normal they develop through play. Even though no-upstairs is objectively more challenging than 2.5 shafts per game, people would accept it more readily if it were the default mode of crawl.
As for how to address the difficulty of the early game, the root of the problem is that the player character is fairly weak compared to worst case spawns. That is easy to address. The next layer of the problem is that the rest of the game is too easy so you end up with a bland game experience. The best solution to this is increasing the difficulty of the rest of the game, which is the direction hellcrawl pursues.
sanka wrote:Front loaded difficulty is caused by many factors, I may even miss some:
1. To make the game winnable for beginners, it must be winnable with bad skilling/strategy (I use strategy mean long term decisions like equipment, etc. as opposed to tactics here). Currently it is. But since we want to make skill decisions relevant, this means that any charcter that has somewhat sane skilling will be much stronger then the enemies.
2. Consumables accumulate. Worse players need them more, if we want them to have enough later then as you get better you will have so huge amount that makes many situations trivial (if you actually use them).
3. Crawl is non-linear. This has bad consequences, and the impact is very clear, as usually the game suddenly becomes easier when you find the first branch (lair), or maybe a few levels after it. It is not the fact that you can go multiple ways matters, but that there is no very clear order of difficulty. This is bad, because if there are two levels of the same difficulty, you clear the first, get stronger, and the second becomes easier: the earlier levels will be the harder ones. Crawl has many, many such levels: after lair the rest of the dungeon is usually easier than it should be.
4. Gods are really unbalanced.
Removing shafts from early dungeon will not help this at all IMHO, their impact is way too low on difficulty.
Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1131
Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03
VeryAngryFelid wrote:Yes, the same problem of approach "top players playing MiBe don't have difficulty winning so let's add crazy monsters".
Abyss Ambulator
Posts: 1131
Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03
IveGoneSupine wrote:Like, even if you don't think it's as big of a problem as any of the other things you listed, would you agree that it is something that does contribute to front loaded difficulty? If so, even if only a minor impact, isn't it worth examining it as something that warrants change?
Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 4432
Joined: Friday, 8th May 2015, 17:51
sanka wrote:VeryAngryFelid wrote:Yes, the same problem of approach "top players playing MiBe don't have difficulty winning so let's add crazy monsters".
I am really surprised that you think that for someone who has no difficulty winning a MiBe Juggernauts and caustic shrikes pose some insurmountable challenge. They are far from being very dangerous if you look at them in isolation for their depths.
They only seem strong because the other monsters surrounding them in depths are popcorn. Even for a MiBe, monsters are more dangerous in early Dungeon, compared to a typical character.
Lair Larrikin
Posts: 23
Joined: Saturday, 6th April 2019, 23:22
sanka wrote:Well, first I'd like to add that whether shafts are allowed on the first couple of levels is a minor issue to me, but I personally disagree with you here.
First, I disagree with "shafts contributing to front loaded difficulty". The fact tealizard talks about (the first ~4 levels are the most dangerous for experienced players) are different from the difficulty drop later, which I talked about. Tealizard is absolutely right pointing it out!
In the first couple of levels you
1. Do have very, very few consumables if at all
2. The monsters are stronger than you for most races (the peak is D2/D3).
And on D1 you cannot go back a level to rest.
It changes very, very quickly on the subsequent levels. This makes *everything* potentially lethal on the first few levels, an OOD spawn, a weak monster wandering behind you blocking your route to the stairs, a teleport trap, open layout, etc. Yes, it makes shafts potentially more lethal as well, but in my perception, this still has nothing to do with shafts specifically.
So whether the difficulty of the first few dungeon levels warrants a change - it is debatable, I do not know. For me it's ok, for beginners it could be too harsh, I do not know for sure. But removing shafts from the first few levels would be a very, very strange change in my eyes if the aim is reducing this difficulty. Because "minor impact" is decesive for me: it is worthless to change something into something more complicated (who will remember the first floor where shafts can happen, understanding the reason for this restriction and its impact to future changes, etc.), when it has really minor impact, so we do not achieve anything!
2. It is an unnecessary complication to limit them to a certain depth, a hidden property of the dungeon, which complicates the further assessment of balance. Also, if there are (rare) shafts early on then beginners will be familiar with them without reaching lower levels!
Also, I would like to add that for me it sounds much easier to add "easy races" to the game that do not have problems with shafts for beginners than to fix game mechanics with "challenge races" to experienced players. I wish the game to be open to beginners - however, they do not need to be able to easily win with a Naga or Mummy. Play a Troll.
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