Labyrinth

[Galefury]

There's a bunch of people saying they like them in this very thread. So clearly people's reasons to dislike them, while possibly objective and real, and definitely valid for them, do not apply to everyone.

For me it's like this: if I'm done with the lab quickly I see it as a fun break, if it takes long it gets tedious.

[sage]

So clearly people's reasons to dislike them, while possibly objective and real, and definitely valid for them, do not apply to everyone.

I doubt that many things removed from Crawl were universally disliked: Fulsome Distillation and Evaporate were a blast for some because of multiflavored grenades; Hive was appreciated by a few because it eased the hunger clock; others liked priests of Zin for earlier access to his abilities; and others still enjoyed playing as sludge elves, and most notably, mountain dwarves. In each case, the devs decided that the thing didn't benefit Crawl enough to justify its existence.

Labyrinths, as they stand, do not benefit Crawl enough to justify their existence. Starvation, one of the two concerns mentioned in their description, is just shy of being a non-issue. And in my (perhaps unusual) experience, Donald, trapdoor spiders, and whatever else spawns there are not common enough to be a reasonable concern for whoever finds a portal. That leaves the majority of labyrinths to be tedious, overlong places ended by a fleeting moment of tension.

[Volteccer_Jack]

labyrinths are better than the other portal vaults right now except sewer imo

I don't have to worry about stupid bullcrap like remembering which map is the one that gets covered in lava, or making wild guesses about whether this ice cave has a frost giant or an ice fiend at the end.

Starvation,

Food has basically nothing to do with labyrinths except the flavour text when you first go to the entrance. Unless you're a troll or spriggan hunger isn't a 'clock'.

Anyway the basic premise of 'lab haters' seems to be that walking is boring, and i disagree completely.

[One-Eyed Jack]

Why is autoexplore disabled in labs?

[dck]

Because else people may realize faster it's the portal of trading maybe 1k turns for amazing loot and we can't have that.

[Amnesiac]

I don't have to worry about stupid bullcrap like remembering which map is the one that gets covered in lava, or making wild guesses about whether this ice cave has a frost giant or an ice fiend at the end..

I find this fun, though. You need to be careful and think in caves, this has a feel of adventure unlike a lot of other parts of the game. Finding a way to take out the boss at the end or steal the stuff from the end vault is a nice challenge too

[dck]

Btw I don't really buy into this whole "refreshing change of pace from the normal game" argument some brought up either. I can't speak for others but I like the normal pace of the game and that's why I play it, and I don't appreciate that my exploration of d: 12 has to come to a screeching halt because the game just decided to give me all this probably great loot at the cost of me spending a few hundred turns in its house of fun and killing some guy with horns.

[Galefury]

Well, I don't mind the occasional change of pace. Good for me I guess!

[Siegurt]

What exactly constitutes a "benefit" which justifies its existence to the game? What "benefit" do ice caves and ossuaries and volcanoes have which Labyrinths are not?

[One-Eyed Jack]

They don't actively prevent you from using autoexplore

[Volteccer_Jack]

I don't have to worry about stupid bullcrap like remembering which map is the one that gets covered in lava, or making wild guesses about whether this ice cave has a frost giant or an ice fiend at the end..

I find this fun, though.

You think requiring spoilers is fun?

[dpeg]

Sorry for late reply. (Thanks to dck for in-depth reply.)

First, a disclaimer: I am hopelessly biased on this topic, because (1) labyrinths were the blueprint when I suggested portal vaults, (2) labyrinths are both the mythical source for minotaurs and also Crawl's source for this monster-equivalent of a player species, (3) I always liked to solve mazes. This is why I much rather think about how to improve labyrinths than support outright removal.

Second, a reassessment: the main advantages of timed portal vaults (besides the minor ones of: sources of theme; portal race choices and general niftiness, especially relevant in the early game) are that you only have attempt, cannot prepare very much and that the portal vault can change some rules.
Labyrinths change game rules but not very efficiently. As a theoretical exercise, would a 10x10 room be interesting where you enter and face the minotaur right away? I'd think so, assuming that the portal comes up early enough (something we have under control) -- i.e. the minotaur should be a very strong (possibly OOD) enemy by the time you meet him. Your task is assessing whether you can beef up yourself enough for that single fight.
The current labyrinth is just like this, only that you have the prefix of running through the maze. I think this is where most consternation comes from. So the real question if running through mazes can be made more interesting.

If not, we could just make labyrinths really small vaults. For flavour, there'd be a thin layer of maze-y structures, but you'd get to the minotaur right away. With this, we'd keep the source of a player monster and the tactical challenge would be preserved. In my opinion, this is a fallback position we always have at our disposal.

Now some ideas before such measures:

• I don't think that starvation is an interesting death, even if it happens very rarely. Therefore I suggest that you're just dispelled as soon as you hit the starving status (don't worry, a thematic reason for this can be found).
• With that out of the way, we can be more drastic about having the player pay with food. E.g. increased hunger (disabling sustenance if we want), and sending more hungry ghosts and harpies at the player.
• These monsters emanate from the minotaur and get to you using the shortest path (i.e. they don't wander around in the maze, they hunt you). The minotaur could be one of them (he, or a replacement, will be at the lair once you get there). We can be nice and mark the floor squares of the last ten or so steps these monsters took -- this way you get clues about how to get to the minotaur.
• The minotaur could get stronger the more minions he sends out. (For example, have a chance to be awake, pick up loot items, "find" a monster-usable potion.)

I believe that there is some (not too much) skill in doing these mazes. However, you can use resources to speed it up (so far digging & disintegration; if we replace some walls with lava, there would be flight; another option are pre-detected strong mimics: you cannot harm them from afar and they'll fight if you come near, but if you kill them, there's a hole in the wall).

Making the maze more of a race (I've tried to hint at how this could be done) has the effect that manual movement is definitely better than autoexplore. In other words, there would now be a gameplay reason to disable autoexplore, rather than "we don't want you to get to the battle at the push of a button and the expense of half a ration". You want to be quick, and autoexplore cannot decide for you if you want to use digging/disintegration or take on this mimic.

Final disclaimer: I don't really expect to convince hardened labyrinth-haters by this. I am just thinking about ways which might make me enjoy labyrinths more (and as I said, I already enjoy going through them -- it never takes me long, but I admit they don't pose decisions before the battle).

By the way, more vaults are always good. They make it easier to navigate the maze (for mnemonic and for layout reasons) but I'd advise against many loot-heavy vaults. We don't want to encourage players to fully explore labyrinths: they are supposed to find the minotaur and fight him.

[sage]

What "benefit" do ice caves and ossuaries and volcanoes have which Labyrinths are not?

I haven't gotten Ossuary in a while and I don't much like Volcano, so I'll speak about Ice Cave alone.

Why it's interesting, and therefore beneficial: Much like Dungeon+Zot, the main branches of Crawl, it offers good loot with significant risk. No challenge is not very interesting, and bad loot means there's no reason to bother entering.
Why it's unlike Labyrinth: Again like D+Z, there is consistently some danger in between start and end. For giant end, at least as much as Lair's usual inhabitants are dangerous.

[Amnesiac]

Some of those ideas might be fun(like mimics), but some might be frustrating, for example hapries and hungry ghosts, why would you want to kill players in the most frustrating way?.. Also if you kick out the player at starving, it might be too late if his stash is far away, it shouldn't be the case in the Lair I guess, but what if you encounter monsters? I'd rather leave it as it is for the most part, but some spice wouldn't hurt, but not so it makes labs more complicated. It would indeed be nice to have some shortcuts like that mimic idea or lava tiles.

[dck]

Some players are used to not eating until they hit the starving status so that'd only mean you need to put a big sign warning about it when you enter the lab and then it only ever affects the careless.
Harpies are incredibly dangerous to the average player doing lab btw (as in, damage-wise because they hit you for ton of damage and you can't avoid them). In fact if you pit two harpies against the minotaur in the arena they win almost every time, and even a single harpy often deals very significant damage to him or leaves him almost dead on her own. Food looting is not what makes harpies jerks, killing people is.
Now about the minotaur himself, I've said he isn't challenging before and I stand by it, but always in the context of you having time to prepare for the fight properly and being aware of where he is. He has weaknesses like being a natural monster and not having a lot of EV or having the HP of your average hydra without the regen but that doesn't mean he doesn't hit like a ton of bricks and can often times potentially two-shot players who engage him.
Since the minotaur himself is hella strong, I think making the rest of the lab consistent in terms of danger (by chucking harpies or multiple minotaurs at the player for example) is sheer madness.Similarly guaranteeing he'll start getting might pots and haste if you happen to take too long (which you probably will because harpies are damn dangerous and you'll need to rest afterwards) is pretty bad, quite bad.
What's worst, if the player is meant to confront all these things as he makes his way through the lab I expect that at least they won't be cheap shadow creatures or have some other justification for not giving exp, because you're asking the player to kill these things that are in the way and it doesn't make any sense not to reward him for it. But there are combos that can deal with them with relative ease, so some may take that as encouragement to keep killing all those minotaur-shaped exp potions that after all do give more exp than a hydra.

[Amnesiac]

I (obviously) hate killing stuff for no exp, but it's not like you don't get rewarded in the end, sometimes you get ridiculous amouts of good stuff for killing a monster about as dangerous as hydrae, but harpies are BAD

[dck]

It's not rare to need burning an important consumable or two to kill the minotaur, the chance having to do this more than once would make some reconsider doing it at all, knowing that you'll have to kill multiple minotaurs and then maybe face a buffed one would dissuade the majority I think.

[khalil]

@dpeg
While adding more hungry ghosts and just expelling the player when he reaches starving seems nice, it has the problem that Lab curerently has: Mummies and Dijin.
Hungry ghosts are hiliarioulsy pathetic to creatures without a food clock.
Perhaps a set timer for mummies/dijin untill they get kicked out? (You are not welcome here! Leave at once!)

[njvack]

If you want to spend a million turns in a lab for no particular gain, I don't see why crawl should prevent you.

[MoogleDan]

I said earlier that non-lethal penalties seemed like the best way to make people willing to risk a Labyrinth while still forcing them to consider the costs of doing so. I think one metric that hasn't been considered is the player's gold. Losing gold is bad, as it reduces your ability to take advantage of all the shops and bazaars that you have yet to encounter in the Dungeon floors to come, but it's by no means lethal. I also really like the idea of the labyrinth as a sprawling maze, and agree with dpeg's statement that there's a certain degree of skill and thought in labyrinth navigation (at least in order to do so quickly).

My proposal is to keep labyrinths as the giant mazes they currently are, but to add labyrinth scamps. These should be flimsy, fast monsters that spawn as you explore the place, slowly at first, and gradually faster. They do no damage in combat, but instead destroy a chunk of gold and then poof out of existence. If they hit you and you have no gold, you get booted back to the Dungeon. Couple this with some more labyrinth features that allow you to cheat your way to the center faster (crossable lava, diggable walls, mimic guards), and you'll wind up with an interesting labyrinth race that doesn't require horribly lethal, aggravating monsters. Best case scenario you navigate it quick and escape with your pocketbook unscathed and the pile of loot in hand; worst case scenario you're suddenly broke, which sucks, but isn't a game-ender.

Labyrinth scamp: 1 HP, 12 speed, 0 AC, Enough EV that melee fighters with a stack of stones will miss on occasion, but low enough that ranged fighters will almost always hit. Deals gold damage, then disappears in a cloud of purple smoke. No experience, leaves only purple smoke when killed ("You hit the labyrinth scamp! The labyrinth scamp escapes in a puff of smoke!".

"A secretive thing wrapped in tattered rags, this is a member of the mysterious people who dwell beneath the Labyrinth. Although harmless, their greed knows no bounds, and will gradually overcome their natural terror of interlopers."

Also, to provide a little variety, have there be a 5% chance of instead spawning an endless worm:

Endless worm: 15 HP, 10 speed, 0 AC, 1 EV. Deals 1 point of rot on a successful hit, then disappears.

"These hideous, writhing forms seem to be without beginning or end. Although sealed away in the Labyrinth, they seek out intruders and enter their bodies in an attempt to hitchhike out and spread their blight throughout the world."

[TeshiAlair]

I definitely like the idea of being able to "cheat" the labyrinth. It might also help to make some varied labyrinths, perhaps based on some of the other portal vaults

For example-
Sewer labyrinth- walls don't change, but monsters emerge from the depths, and the minotaur spawns with a poisoned weapon.

Volcano labyrinth- the maze-changing is reflected thematically by lava flows shifting. Having flight makes it much easier, but since heat rises, it could have hp/time penalties for abusing. Minotaur has flaming weapon

etc

[mikee]

ADOM has a branch that is essentially a large labyrinth with a lot of the ideas in this thread incorporated into it. It is full of traps, wall mimics, and minotaurs that do various things to the player (hella damage, confusion, stat draining). Despite its loot including one of the best items in the game, this branch is very rarely visited. I would consider it to be a failure.

[Sar]

@MoogleDan:

why

[MoogleDan]

@MoogleDan:

why

Or you could get rid of the maze entirely and all pretense of it being any different from the rest of the game and make it a door leading to a room with a minotaur followed by a door leading to a room with some gear and rename the whole thing to The Cow Hole.

I like there being a maze. I like the extremely rare moments where some enemy pops up and attacks. I see nothing wrong with adding a weird variant combat system like this, where losing has minor but not fatal consequences. Heck, if you want, we could throw escape portals in every so often. Things getting out of hand? Abort. I see the point of complaining that it's just a thousand turns of walking and that being dull. Why not add some tactical combat choices to it?