Shoals Surfer
Posts: 298
Joined: Wednesday, 9th March 2016, 20:00
Thursday, 15th September 2016, 00:36
Merge Pan and Hell; reform Tomb
Disclaimer: this is a radical change and I'm sure it will upset some players just by virtue of that if implemented. However, if anything, it is clear that Crawl devs aren't afraid of introducing radical changes. This might have a bigger scope than a lot of other 'radical changes', though.
***
Crawl already suffers from the problem of being too long - on the other hand, I'm not sure of how the pre-extended game could be trimmed further without cutting out good content. (A subject for another thread, perhaps.) As for the extended, though - the solution seems obvious. Pandemonium and Hell overlap in a lot of ways. Thematically - they're both vaguely defined demon-filled wastelands. Game-technically: they have a lot of the same monsters in them. (Actually, Hell is pretty much just "Pandemonium monsters split among the four realms in a thematic manner, plus mostly irrelevant popcorn".) Both Pan and Hell offer some added challenges compared to the pre-extended game - but once you've met a few of them and are able to handle them, most of Pan/Hell is just a slog.
Not much would be lost if Pan and Hell were to be merged - the game would become shorter while prospective 11-runers would face the same challenges as former prospective 15-runes, more or less. There are several ways this could be done. My idea is as such:
Hell (as in the separate realm) is removed as it is now. Its unique concepts make their way over into Pan.
Instead of random Pan floors being the realms of the four Pan lords, occasionally you will get portals leading to Coc/Tar/Geh/Dis. However, these would not be 7-level areas. The first six floors of any Hell realm are basically irrelevant for any extended-capable characters, and also uninteresting: the player just ends up running through them, often utterly ignoring everything on the screen (except for a handful of torment-capable threats like Ice Fiends in Coc). Lazy characters with lots of consumables might teleport if they get impatient and haven't found a down stairway for a while. Instead, the player is dumped into the equivalent of the seventh level immediately, and s/he cannot leave until the rune is acquired (to make up for the fact that s/he can freely choose to enter the portal or leave and have it spawn on another Pandemonium level). If this is considered too scary, then portals can simply be treated as special Pan levels are now - i.e. you only get them once, and are warned if you try to leave before tackling it). Monsters exclusive to Hell (such as iron giants) appear behind these portals. Same goes for "the mystical force of hell", if that is deemed to be a desirable concept worth saving over - though it might have to strike more often and with slightly different effects to stay relevant.
The pan lords and hell lords are merged in pairs, with the new creatures (based on the hell lords) being themed as the greatest of the pan lords. Cerebov is merged into Asmodeus, and Lom Lobon into Antaeus - who would become much like current Lom Lobon (actually, Lom Lobon could just replace Antaeus here since the latter doesn't actually do much other than do a lot of ice damage in melee). Mnoleg is merged into Ereshkigal - the new undead queen would be themed as a lady of both mutation and decay, able to do a mutating attack that also causes severe rotting (around 5-10% of current max HP, or 20-30 HP, something along those lines). Her realm would also have a lot of mutated beings around in addition to the undead. Gloorx is merged into Dispater - there is already a lot of undead in Dis, so this makes sense thematically. Now Dispater would be able to summon executioners as well and use Black Mark, or spit miasma.
I would also argue that these new pan lords should only drop their runes once they are dead. Ninjaing the pan/hell runes is currently too boring IMO, as it essentially wastes the bosses - optimal play usually makes it possible to apport or otherwise ninja the rune and ignore the bosses, and fighting the lords is usually counterproductive. If not, the current mechanic of them randomly appearing elsewhere in Pan and during the orb run could stay, although I feel this is insufficient punishment for not killing the bosses (though perhaps with stuff like new Ereshkigal, it would not be).
If the devs are attached to Geryon, he could appear in the vaults which generate the demonic rune. The TSO fortress could be reflavored as corrupt fallen angels (I already see it that way TBH) with Geryon being added next to the seraph, or the fortress just wouldn't have Geryon.
***
Tomb is another part of the extended endgame I don't like. Ghouls have a rather easy time there in there because of torment immunity, while others essentially have to get Kiku or Necromutation. Failing these, even with partial torment resistance (e.g. Gargoyles, Statue Form) the whole place becomes a stairdancing nightmare, essentially taking all the biggest problems of Crawl tactics (the tedious, yet optimal nature of kiting and stairdancing) and further magnifying them - at least during normal play, you can often get away with lazy play at the cost of an occasional extra consumable or two (which is a good thing as long as mass stairdancing and kiting are still the technically best way to play), while in Tomb you are absolutely forced into tedious, yet optimal play. (Two greater mummies are much more than twice as dangerous as one.) This becomes especially bad on the last level where you have to pop down for one turn and pull up whatever you can - even staying for two turns risks incurring so much torment and added damage that death becomes a real possibility. Very, very tedious.
There are two ways to solve this issue. One: make stairdancing impossible in the Tomb, either by forcing one-way passage or by making all up/down stairs into hatches (I prefer the latter). Of course, the potency of Tomb monsters needs to be scaled down in this case, as this much Torment without stairdancing would mean that the Tomb would become either impossible to complete, or extremely tedious and requiring a huge consumable tax. Two: vastly reduce the Torment spam and other factors that make stairdancing necessary - but then I fear that Tomb would become boring and rather indistinguishable from Vaults:5 or Crypt itself as far as gameplay is concerned. The Tomb is cool and I'd rather not cut it out, but you might as well do so if you choose the second option. (The third, secret option - namely, find a way to disincentivize stairdancing and kiting in Crawl in general - would probably be the best, but I also don't know how to go about it while retaining the core of the game, and also not making the game even more frustrating.)
My vision of a reformed Tomb would roughly be as follows: hatches instead of stairs; instead of the huge numbers of useless traps, have a set of Tomb-specific traps that would do chaotic stuff like teleport you around, or apply a Howl-like effect that summons death scarabs on you for a while. There could also be sarcophagi that generate a constant stream of lesser (non-Torment-capable) undead - they could only be destroyed by several castings of Disintegration or LRD (or just couldn't be destroyed at all). The hatch to the last level would drop you in an "outer ring" of a level which has an inner chamber; the rune would be in the middle, with numerous monsters guarding it, and the single stairway up on the same square as the rune. The golden rune could still be ninja'd, but the player would have to lure out the monsters and survive among them for a while before moving in - or s/he could just try fighting them as they slowly make their way out of the inner chamber. There is also a load of other loot (including the zig-fig) on the other squares inside the chamber.) Overall, there would be less Torment dispensers, and more other interesting, non-tormenting monsters (death scarabs, anubis guards, various liches).
***
Eager to hear some feedback on all this stuff I typed out!
***
Crawl already suffers from the problem of being too long - on the other hand, I'm not sure of how the pre-extended game could be trimmed further without cutting out good content. (A subject for another thread, perhaps.) As for the extended, though - the solution seems obvious. Pandemonium and Hell overlap in a lot of ways. Thematically - they're both vaguely defined demon-filled wastelands. Game-technically: they have a lot of the same monsters in them. (Actually, Hell is pretty much just "Pandemonium monsters split among the four realms in a thematic manner, plus mostly irrelevant popcorn".) Both Pan and Hell offer some added challenges compared to the pre-extended game - but once you've met a few of them and are able to handle them, most of Pan/Hell is just a slog.
Not much would be lost if Pan and Hell were to be merged - the game would become shorter while prospective 11-runers would face the same challenges as former prospective 15-runes, more or less. There are several ways this could be done. My idea is as such:
Hell (as in the separate realm) is removed as it is now. Its unique concepts make their way over into Pan.
Instead of random Pan floors being the realms of the four Pan lords, occasionally you will get portals leading to Coc/Tar/Geh/Dis. However, these would not be 7-level areas. The first six floors of any Hell realm are basically irrelevant for any extended-capable characters, and also uninteresting: the player just ends up running through them, often utterly ignoring everything on the screen (except for a handful of torment-capable threats like Ice Fiends in Coc). Lazy characters with lots of consumables might teleport if they get impatient and haven't found a down stairway for a while. Instead, the player is dumped into the equivalent of the seventh level immediately, and s/he cannot leave until the rune is acquired (to make up for the fact that s/he can freely choose to enter the portal or leave and have it spawn on another Pandemonium level). If this is considered too scary, then portals can simply be treated as special Pan levels are now - i.e. you only get them once, and are warned if you try to leave before tackling it). Monsters exclusive to Hell (such as iron giants) appear behind these portals. Same goes for "the mystical force of hell", if that is deemed to be a desirable concept worth saving over - though it might have to strike more often and with slightly different effects to stay relevant.
The pan lords and hell lords are merged in pairs, with the new creatures (based on the hell lords) being themed as the greatest of the pan lords. Cerebov is merged into Asmodeus, and Lom Lobon into Antaeus - who would become much like current Lom Lobon (actually, Lom Lobon could just replace Antaeus here since the latter doesn't actually do much other than do a lot of ice damage in melee). Mnoleg is merged into Ereshkigal - the new undead queen would be themed as a lady of both mutation and decay, able to do a mutating attack that also causes severe rotting (around 5-10% of current max HP, or 20-30 HP, something along those lines). Her realm would also have a lot of mutated beings around in addition to the undead. Gloorx is merged into Dispater - there is already a lot of undead in Dis, so this makes sense thematically. Now Dispater would be able to summon executioners as well and use Black Mark, or spit miasma.
I would also argue that these new pan lords should only drop their runes once they are dead. Ninjaing the pan/hell runes is currently too boring IMO, as it essentially wastes the bosses - optimal play usually makes it possible to apport or otherwise ninja the rune and ignore the bosses, and fighting the lords is usually counterproductive. If not, the current mechanic of them randomly appearing elsewhere in Pan and during the orb run could stay, although I feel this is insufficient punishment for not killing the bosses (though perhaps with stuff like new Ereshkigal, it would not be).
If the devs are attached to Geryon, he could appear in the vaults which generate the demonic rune. The TSO fortress could be reflavored as corrupt fallen angels (I already see it that way TBH) with Geryon being added next to the seraph, or the fortress just wouldn't have Geryon.
***
Tomb is another part of the extended endgame I don't like. Ghouls have a rather easy time there in there because of torment immunity, while others essentially have to get Kiku or Necromutation. Failing these, even with partial torment resistance (e.g. Gargoyles, Statue Form) the whole place becomes a stairdancing nightmare, essentially taking all the biggest problems of Crawl tactics (the tedious, yet optimal nature of kiting and stairdancing) and further magnifying them - at least during normal play, you can often get away with lazy play at the cost of an occasional extra consumable or two (which is a good thing as long as mass stairdancing and kiting are still the technically best way to play), while in Tomb you are absolutely forced into tedious, yet optimal play. (Two greater mummies are much more than twice as dangerous as one.) This becomes especially bad on the last level where you have to pop down for one turn and pull up whatever you can - even staying for two turns risks incurring so much torment and added damage that death becomes a real possibility. Very, very tedious.
There are two ways to solve this issue. One: make stairdancing impossible in the Tomb, either by forcing one-way passage or by making all up/down stairs into hatches (I prefer the latter). Of course, the potency of Tomb monsters needs to be scaled down in this case, as this much Torment without stairdancing would mean that the Tomb would become either impossible to complete, or extremely tedious and requiring a huge consumable tax. Two: vastly reduce the Torment spam and other factors that make stairdancing necessary - but then I fear that Tomb would become boring and rather indistinguishable from Vaults:5 or Crypt itself as far as gameplay is concerned. The Tomb is cool and I'd rather not cut it out, but you might as well do so if you choose the second option. (The third, secret option - namely, find a way to disincentivize stairdancing and kiting in Crawl in general - would probably be the best, but I also don't know how to go about it while retaining the core of the game, and also not making the game even more frustrating.)
My vision of a reformed Tomb would roughly be as follows: hatches instead of stairs; instead of the huge numbers of useless traps, have a set of Tomb-specific traps that would do chaotic stuff like teleport you around, or apply a Howl-like effect that summons death scarabs on you for a while. There could also be sarcophagi that generate a constant stream of lesser (non-Torment-capable) undead - they could only be destroyed by several castings of Disintegration or LRD (or just couldn't be destroyed at all). The hatch to the last level would drop you in an "outer ring" of a level which has an inner chamber; the rune would be in the middle, with numerous monsters guarding it, and the single stairway up on the same square as the rune. The golden rune could still be ninja'd, but the player would have to lure out the monsters and survive among them for a while before moving in - or s/he could just try fighting them as they slowly make their way out of the inner chamber. There is also a load of other loot (including the zig-fig) on the other squares inside the chamber.) Overall, there would be less Torment dispensers, and more other interesting, non-tormenting monsters (death scarabs, anubis guards, various liches).
***
Eager to hear some feedback on all this stuff I typed out!
If I play online, I do so under the screenname Marenglen.
- For this message the author Malevolent has received thanks:
- Floodkiller
