Extended is as boring as ever


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Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 7th October 2017, 16:49

Extended is as boring as ever

It just dozens of levels full of demons that all have the same way of handling them (with exceptions here and there, holy pan being one) It doesn't have one singular mechanic that is a problem. The problem is that those mechanics are repeated over and over again. The only threat there is is torment + hellfire. Did you prepare for that threat? Good nothing else will meaningfully hurt you.

Why aren't there actually powerful monsters in sufficient quantity that attack the player in another way?
Why aren't there powerful monsters that cast spells like firestorm and glaciate to attack the player?
Why aren't there powerful monsters with debuffs like screen wide slows or silence?
Why aren't there monsters that are actually a threat in melee to a xp27 melee character?

Something radical is simply needed or the extended portion of the game will never see improvement.

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Post Saturday, 7th October 2017, 17:17

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

If you make all monsters in Hell/Pan strong enough to threaten the typical XL 27 player, with increased damage for example, the melee-only monsters will still be completely useless(especially since most XL 27 characters will have some form of translocations/teleport scrolls).

Therefore they'll likely need a strong ranged attack that can rapidly whittle down the players health. But this would really just be torment/hellfire in another wrapper.

Nothing outside of an irresistible 1-shot kill can threaten an XL 27 character. They have too many escape resources,options and durability.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 7th October 2017, 17:54

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

Vajrapani wrote:If you make all monsters in Hell/Pan strong enough to threaten the typical XL 27 player, with increased damage for example, the melee-only monsters will still be completely useless(especially since most XL 27 characters will have some form of translocations/teleport scrolls).

Therefore they'll likely need a strong ranged attack that can rapidly whittle down the players health. But this would really just be torment/hellfire in another wrapper.

Nothing outside of an irresistible 1-shot kill can threaten an XL 27 character. They have too many escape resources,options and durability.


Maybe but now they aren't even trying.

Though the almost infinite ability to retreat is one of the reasons I think ziggurats are so much more interesting than hell/pan

The tomb stairs change was actually a really good one.

Maybe ziggurats should have a rune.....

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Post Saturday, 7th October 2017, 18:33

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

CPTANT wrote:
Maybe but now they aren't even trying.

Though the almost infinite ability to retreat is one of the reasons I think ziggurats are so much more interesting than hell/pan

The tomb stairs change was actually a really good one.

Maybe ziggurats should have a rune.....


Yeah, I think there's no real way to make individual monsters themselves strong enough to challenge the player(without making it too unfair), but terrain set-up can definitely provide a challenge(e.g. Vault:5, new Tomb, Ziggurats.)

The first step would probably be to make Pan non-infinite.
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Post Tuesday, 28th November 2017, 22:25

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

Make the player lose naturally the XL once it hits the maximum value while staying in Hell/Pan, yet as as slower pace than they were achieved. You still can gain them by fighting to sustain the loss.

The thrill does not come from the monsters themselves but from you getting worse against them.
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Post Wednesday, 29th November 2017, 04:11

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

CPTANT wrote:Why aren't there powerful monsters that cast spells like firestorm and glaciate to attack the player?
Why aren't there powerful monsters with debuffs like screen wide slows or silence?
there are though...

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Post Wednesday, 29th November 2017, 18:22

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

Try hellcrawl, going into Pan at level 22 or so on an all rune (or most rune) run is pretty intimidating.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Friday, 1st December 2017, 14:47

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

duvessa wrote:
CPTANT wrote:Why aren't there powerful monsters that cast spells like firestorm and glaciate to attack the player?
Why aren't there powerful monsters with debuffs like screen wide slows or silence?
there are though...


Either uniques or monsters with random spellsets like panlords. So all in pathetic quantities.

How many monsters on the other hand do you encounter that spam torment?

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Post Friday, 1st December 2017, 15:04

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

There is silent spectre.

I don't see the point of making extended so you have a good chance of getting instantly one shotted, or having to use up all your consumables before you can get all the runes. I would say the problem with extended right now is that it almost forces you to build your character so it must either be able to regenerate health/magic quickly or be immune/resistant to torment to do extended.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Friday, 1st December 2017, 20:20

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

Silent spectre is anything but a powerful monster......

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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Saturday, 2nd December 2017, 10:03

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

CPTANT wrote:Silent spectre is anything but a powerful monster......

Not against melee fighters, sure. But all casters wet their pants when they meet a spectre at the wrong moment. You don't even have to meet it. It can ruin your day sitting on its haunches safely behind a wall. The silent area is quite large.
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Post Thursday, 7th December 2017, 03:46

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

most players are too powerful for enemies aside from a few (cerebov firestorm, lom glaciate, asmo 3x brimstone fiend summon, and the occasional random panlord for instance) to be able to kill, unless they can do so in an unfair way like chaos melee -> paralyze. the higher your AC, EV, HP, and access to consumables and resistances get the harder it is to get enough swing damage to get the player to 0 hp. torment and hellfire are ways of trying to get around this issue but torment in particular can be unfun in its own way. It is pretty tough at a lower level though, except Tomb, but Tomb is never enjoyable.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 9th December 2017, 12:16

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

tabstorm wrote:most players are too powerful for enemies aside from a few (cerebov firestorm, lom glaciate, asmo 3x brimstone fiend summon, and the occasional random panlord for instance) to be able to kill, unless they can do so in an unfair way like chaos melee -> paralyze. the higher your AC, EV, HP, and access to consumables and resistances get the harder it is to get enough swing damage to get the player to 0 hp. torment and hellfire are ways of trying to get around this issue but torment in particular can be unfun in its own way. It is pretty tough at a lower level though, except Tomb, but Tomb is never enjoyable.


I don't find torment and hellfire bad on their own.

I think it is bad how overused they are. If there were other credible threats such things would be fine.

And like I said there are plenty of effects that can make higher level monsters dangerous, like slowing and silence (and more) but these abilities are used in minimal quantities and either on weak monsters or uniques.

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Post Sunday, 10th December 2017, 21:22

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

An easy fix would be to just shorten extended further. This kind of "extended" can already be tested in hellcrawl where Pandemonium forces you through all unique pan levels with randomly generated ones being removed, Abyss rune was removed, and only 1 hell branch is randomly generated though it's incorporated into a standard run. Branches like tomb are just relegated to depths and may occasionally appear. This exposes you to the same dangers as a typical extended run but without the repetition and enough of the torment/hellfire spam is optional that a "normal" character can avoid most of it.

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Post Monday, 11th December 2017, 09:54

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

The problems mostly discussed here are that the character is too strong for extended. This is mostly in the hands of the player, and there's an easy solution: don't grind all the XP in the game before you go to extended. Either skip some XP or do extended earlier.

As I have said elsewhere, extended mostly exists to let players enjoy a powerful character. It's very hard to die except by inattention. I myself enjoy playing like this on occasion and wouldn't mind it if it stays that way.

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Post Monday, 11th December 2017, 10:19

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

CPTANT wrote:Good nothing else will meaningfully hurt you.


This is the explanation IMHO. If player didn't die in Depths, Vaults:5 and Zot, we clearly see that monsters just cannot kill PC in a conventional way.

Why aren't there actually powerful monsters in sufficient quantity that attack the player in another way?


You are welcome to suggest those. If they are interesting, they might be added to non-optional branches like Depths or Zot.

Why aren't there powerful monsters that cast spells like firestorm and glaciate to attack the player?


Do you think this is interesting? Such spells make positioning almost irrelevant. By the way do you like fighting Lom Lobon with its Glaciate, Tornado, CBL, Blink Range, Major Healing and immunity to Silence? When you can do nothing except hope it will not cast the spells in the most efficient way it can and you reset the fight by teleporting away until you are lucky with Lom Lobom's spell sequence (if you insist on killing it which is a mistake for many characters).

Why aren't there powerful monsters with debuffs like screen wide slows or silence?


It will lead to even more luring and pack-splitting which is arguably bad.

Why aren't there monsters that are actually a threat in melee to a xp27 melee character?


Because DCSS does not have explicit difficulty levels, heavy armour is OP and GDR should not exist. Or just try FeBe of Trog, especially in extended :)

Something radical is simply needed or the extended portion of the game will never see improvement.


I am not sure. I am terribly scared by extended with most characters (I don't play TSO/Zin/Ely). There are ziggurats if you need a challenge. It's weird to see people using the most powerful combos and at the same time complaining about game being too easy. You can always limit your options like don't use heavy armour, ranged weapons or spells.
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Post Monday, 11th December 2017, 13:22

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I am not sure. I am terribly scared by extended with most characters (I don't play TSO/Zin/Ely). There are ziggurats if you need a challenge. It's weird to see people using the most powerful combos and at the same time complaining about game being too easy. You can always limit your options like don't use heavy armour, ranged weapons or spells.


I agree. Extended is indeed a scary place that can kill you very quickly even if you're being careful.

Edit: It's also boring due to the random map generation and popcorn mobs, but those are different matters.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Monday, 11th December 2017, 16:48

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I am not sure. I am terribly scared by extended with most characters (I don't play TSO/Zin/Ely). There are ziggurats if you need a challenge. It's weird to see people using the most powerful combos and at the same time complaining about game being too easy. You can always limit your options like don't use heavy armour, ranged weapons or spells.


I have played plenty of different characters and I have won plenty of 15 runers and cleared multiple ziggurats, but I am not going to artificially gimp myself. If that is necessary then it is a failure of the games design.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Do you think this is interesting? Such spells make positioning almost irrelevant. By the way do you like fighting Lom Lobon with its Glaciate, Tornado, CBL, Blink Range, Major Healing and immunity to Silence? When you can do nothing except hope it will not cast the spells in the most efficient way it can and you reset the fight by teleporting away until you are lucky with Lom Lobom's spell sequence (if you insist on killing it which is a mistake for many characters).


How is that different from screenwide torment or hellfire? At least other attacks give variety to this.

It will lead to even more luring and pack-splitting which is arguably bad.


This can be said of any powerful monster.

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Post Tuesday, 12th December 2017, 06:32

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

My point is that screenwide and smiting attacks are worse design than adjacent and line of fire attacks. They are ok in small quantities but should not be overused
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Post Tuesday, 12th December 2017, 07:37

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

CPTANT wrote:I have played plenty of different characters and I have won plenty of 15 runers and cleared multiple ziggurats, but I am not going to artificially gimp myself. If that is necessary then it is a failure of the games design.


Have you won Fo with 15 runes (getting last 12 runes during orb run) without level 7+ spells? Have you won Fe with 15 runes? Have you won DEBe of Trog with 15 runes? Have you won Qazlal with 15 runes? Try those and see if you keep thinking that extended is too easy and boring.
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Mines Malingerer

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Post Tuesday, 12th December 2017, 09:29

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
CPTANT wrote:I have played plenty of different characters and I have won plenty of 15 runers and cleared multiple ziggurats, but I am not going to artificially gimp myself. If that is necessary then it is a failure of the games design.


Have you won Fo with 15 runes (getting last 12 runes during orb run) without level 7+ spells? Have you won Fe with 15 runes? Have you won DEBe of Trog with 15 runes? Have you won Qazlal with 15 runes? Try those and see if you keep thinking that extended is too easy and boring.

but I am not going to artificially gimp myself. If that is necessary then it is a failure of the games design.


Also basically every option you say is going to impact early game a lot more than extended. It does nothing to solve the inherent design flaws of it. Being gimped doesn't diversify the threats faced there or reduce endless kiting.

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Post Tuesday, 12th December 2017, 09:32

Re: Extended is as boring as ever

CPTANT wrote:Also basically every option you say is going to impact early game a lot more than extended. It does nothing to solve the inherent design flaws of it. Being gimped doesn't diversify the threats faced there or reduce endless kiting.


I am not sure what you mean here. I suggested you to play harder combos or limit yourself with strong combos. You don't want to limit yourself (and this is fine) so I just provided a few examples of what I consider hard combos. Hard combos are usually harder early game indeed but this is irrelevant, it is true for easy combos as well.

TL/DR. Both Fo and Fe without any limitations have pretty hard time in extended. Try those if you feel bored/easy.
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