Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 4055
Joined: Tuesday, 10th January 2012, 19:49
Vaults:5, the rim, and subvaults
Here is an example of a v:5 layout I got with the recent change:
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In case you missed it, the important thing is there is no longer an outer rim.
Some observations: this is not a minor change. V:5 is significantly more difficult now, and it's not just dealing with the ambush that makes it harder. In general the middle of the level (where the stairs are) is extremely dangerous for a while, and the fact that the only somewhat-reliably-safe locations are now closer to the middle means resting up in general is more difficult. If you do manage to get the attention of lots of monsters from one of the subvaults, you now get punished much more harshly for it since you cannot as easily run around and make them lose tracking.
This brings me to my second observation, which is that conjurer-types who don't have some sort of large AOE spell are pretty much forced to save an immolation scroll for v:5 (or teleport, instead). Stairdancing is generally not safe with the hp/defenses these characters usually have, as well as the possibility of stair-sealing from vault wardens. They do not have enough MP to kill all 24 vault guards without some sort of MP regen, and other than maybe CBOE there isn't really a reliable way to get enough MP to kill everything with e.g. bolt of fire. You cannot safely duck into one of the subvaults (more on this later). You cannot lose the vault guards without teleporting, or extremely high stealth (usually not something these characters have). Immolation actually does enough total damage to kill most of the vault guard pursuit with immo + bolt of fire on a reasonably typical conjurer-type.
The character I did some testing with is basically this one: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/SGrunt/morg ... 212040.txt
Obviously characters with spells like refrigeration, or fire/ice storm, or shatter, can just kill everything from the stairs, and then go back upstairs to regen mp. I'm not talking about those characters here; this change has not much effect if you are able to clear out everything around the stairs immediately. Clouds are also mp-efficient enough to kill the vault guards, though your character will be taking damage as the cloud does its job.
I don't have an opinion right now on whether forcing conjurer-types to use ?immo here is a good idea. It is certainly the case right now, though. If you think I missed a possible approach (it is possible), then let me know. I specifically am assuming the character does not have any source of controlled teleportation; ctele is obviously an option since it instantly makes enemies forget where you are.
For berserker-type characters (I did some testing with basically this one: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/n1000 ... 000314.txt ) you can still typically kill off all the vault guards by going to one of the hallways and fighting from there. It is much more difficult than before. I assume this was the point of the change. I don't personally feel that making v:5 harder was necessary, but if that was the desire then ok.
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Concern: My main concern is that the new layout is significantly more variable in difficulty than the old one, based completely on luck. The different subvaults are of wildly variable difficulty, based on what types of wall layout they include (my example has three very open quadrants, with the top-right being probably the worst for players; and one honeycomb-like quadrant in the bottom-right which is generally good for players), where the enemies are placed (the majority of the enemies in the bottom-left quadrant are far from the stairs, for instance, whereas other vaults place them more evenly), and also just some luck with what monsters you end up getting. Additionally it is now far more difficult to adequately handle a convoker generating near the stairs. Before you could run out of los of the convoker and then deal with it later when you are prepared ... with the new layout you absolutely must deal with it (probably by killing it) immediately, since you cannot outrun it, and letting it survive to recall allies is suicide unless you plan to teleport away. I recognize that crawl has lots of randomness involved in it, but a single specific monster--that's not even out of depth!!--generating anywhere else does not have this kind of difficulty swing associated with it. I do not think that this is desirable.
The subvaults themselves contribute here largely because they do not have a consistent distribution of near-the-stairs monsters. Some subvaults (e.g. vaults_end_mu_long or vaults_end_mu_clover) do not place any enemies near the entrance to the quadrant. Others (e.g. vaults_end_minmay_circular_pillars, vaults_end_minmay_partial_spiral) specifically place enemies near the stairs. These monsters are often 8's, so they are the typical vaults:$ monsters that (used to, at least) create most of the difficulty of v:5. Some of them have the enemies bunched together, so you will usually end up fighting them in a group (vaults_end_dpeg_shops1), others have them spread out (vaults_end_minmay_diagonal_split).
These concerns certainly existed before the v:5 change (well, not the convoker one, so much), but the existence of the rim masked much of the variable difficulty of the subvaults. Before, you could retreat to the rim to lose anything that was chasing you, eventually. You could pretty much ensure that you had a safe place to rest up after encountering monsters. Random teleports were much less risky, since there was significantly more non-subvault space on the map. In short it didn't feel like one v:5 subvault selection was that much more difficult than others, though some of them were clearly difficult (vaults_end_dpeg_mall for instance was clearly one of the difficult subvaults, at least partly because of how it uses doors; amusingly it may not be difficult any more since it specifically places monsters far away from the stairs). In my testing it felt much more variable to me. Having 2 or 3 "8"s chasing you along with the 24 vault guards is much harder to deal with than just having 24 vault guards.
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In general I'm not sure I like the new v:5 layout because it feels really cramped and claustrophobic to me. I don't really like that walking down the hallways is committing to being in that hallway, since this is not really the case anywhere else in the game. Possibly that is the desire, so I bring it up here instead of the "concerns" section. It feels to me like there is much less opportunity to use good positioning to reduce the damage your character will take and instead you are forced to use consumables or the like. Again, this is very different from the rest of crawl, and I don't personally find it as interesting.
edit: Just to be completely clear, my two concerns are the luck factor I mentioned in detail above, and the fact that removing the rim really restricts the player's positioning. Since I feel that positioning and monster control is the single most interesting part of crawl, I do not like this change that speficially aims to reduce its impact in what was previously one of my favourite levels in the game.
I don't actually care about making v:5 harder; this is a thing that definitely happened with this change but it is not the fact that v:5 is more difficult that I care about. Instead I feel the specific ways in which it was made harder are very uninteresting and make the floor significantly less fun than before.