Reasons to remove the Labyrinth

[galehar]

It seems like a lot of time for an activity that is so simple it's been automated and even called "tedious" in the tutorial.

Exploring a level and solving a labyrinth are not the same things.

[BlackSheep]

What about an everchanging maze?

[XuaXua]

What about an everchanging maze?

What, like a level of D that is constantly rotating?

[Grimm]

Topic split from Labyrinth brainstorming. Please put all arguments for removing Labyrinth here.

[One-Eyed Jack]

Maprot was removed because it wasn't fun or interesting and it was also tedious
Manual explore is generally automated because it isn't fun or interesting and it is also tedious

Labyrinth has maprot and forces manual explore

I don't buy that manual explore is different than solving a maze. There are two ways to solve a maze - brute force (i.e. keep covering novel ground until you reach the center) and brute force combined with understanding the algorithms/process used to make the maze (e.g. "start from the end" or "the first path is usually a dead end"). Neither are particularly interesting or relevant to crawl. Also, neither of them are affected by map changing except that they add length to it. If you enabled autoexplore in labs I'd be fine with them, for example.

There isn't any tactical or strategic skill or thought involved in labyrinths, yet they are optimal play and they take up time and energy (even if only a little). This doesn't fit into crawl.

Those are my reasons.

[XuaXua]

Don't like it, don't go in.

Those are my anti-reasons.

[IronJelly]

The thing is, like many other features in the game, the Labrynth provides a challenge to certain playstyle or races or classes. I can easily imagine a Troll or a Centaur starving in a Labrynth, making it a challenge, and something the player would need to consider.

It's the same reason I don't dislike Zombies in the earlier parts of the game. Easy? Not if you were relying on poison to kill stuff. Not everything is going to be a challenge for every build.

Rather than remove them, what if they were made a tad more dangerous? Rather than a single minotaur, what if about a half dozen minotaurs that go berserk at the sight of the player were wondering around the maze? Now every corner you take, you have a possible risk that a minotaur could charge you. This would also serve to provide corpses, giving those of faster metabolism a chance to survive, and since they would berserk, they would be a challenge, especially in the off-chance you come upon two of them, maybe even one in each direction.

it seems like, even without being able to map or auto-explore it, it could be made interesting enough to be worth the entry anyway.

[XuaXua]

The thing is, like many other features in the game, the Labrynth provides a challenge to certain playstyle or races or classes. I can easily imagine a Troll or a Centaur starving in a Labrynth, making it a challenge, and something the player would need to consider.

It's the same reason I don't dislike Zombies in the earlier parts of the game. Easy? Not if you were relying on poison to kill stuff. Not everything is going to be a challenge for every build.

Rather than remove them, what if they were made a tad more dangerous? Rather than a single minotaur, what if about a half dozen minotaurs that go berserk at the sight of the player were wondering around the maze? Now every corner you take, you have a possible risk that a minotaur could charge you. This would also serve to provide corpses, giving those of faster metabolism a chance to survive, and since they would berserk, they would be a challenge, especially in the off-chance you come upon two of them, maybe even one in each direction.

it seems like, even without being able to map or auto-explore it, it could be made interesting enough to be worth the entry anyway.

This is Labyrinth Brainstorming thread material.

[mageykun]

The interesting decision is choosing to bet the survival of your character temporarily on your spacial reasoning skill rather than your ability to min/max stats or evaluate battle tactics. To face the minor genre shift or not.

[dpeg]

I think what people really mean when they campaign for labyrinth removal is this: "We don't want a mini-game in our Crawl!" (Compare Sokoban in Nethack.) Or perhaps, less drastically, "The labyrinth is not mini enough for a mini-game in Crawl."

Fair enough.

It just happens that some players enjoy the maze solving (as do I, which matters less for the labyrinth's future than half a year ago). Here's why I think they should stay:

1. Labyrinths are earlier now; at most one per dungeon.
2. There is a list with ideas for how to improve them -- this could become an implementable, by the way.
3. It would be possible to shift focus completely: away from exploring to a purely tactical situation.

In other words, I refuse to believe that labyrinths cause so much pain that they have to be purged at once. And it'd help if the purging squad spent thinking about how to improve matters -- and here I mean thinking REALLY outside the box.