Friday, 21st October 2011, 04:22 by KoboldLord
Ziggurats are inherently an exercise in tedium, and I don't think they can be fixed without some fairly comprehensive changes. In the end, you're bulldozing through the same tactical situation over and over, and once you've got a character that can clear one Ziggurat there's not much to stop you from racking up the numbers until you get too bored to continue. Nor is it particularly complicated to clear; you can freely grind as long as you want in Pan at no risk to your character until you have the killer combo that can handle everything. Death's Door and Controlled Blink bypass every situation that gets even slightly touchy.
Really, infinite play with the same character doesn't really work in Crawl. Once you've done everything, go win and generate a new character to start over. Adding additional monster sets don't really solve the fundamental problem that you can simply grind until you have the tools, and a monster set that demands an additional tool to beat is simply another thing lengthening the grind.
If I wanted to save the concept of Ziggurats, I'd probably make them a post-endgame timed portal. One time only. It can pop up anywhere in Pan, Hell, Slime, Tomb, or Zot, and it's guaranteed to show up in one of these places. You get a labyrinth-style announcement as you enter the level, and you either take the Ziggurat Challenge right then and there or you give it up forever. No need to grind Pan levels to find it, and indeed if you try you'll get it before you're ready.
Since players would no longer be able to rack up arbitrarily large numbers of Ziggurat levels cleared with which to compare their Crawl-manhood, emphasis would have to shift to clearing out the Ziggurat efficiently rather than stacking the ultimate killer combo of doom and turtling forth. You get points by grabbing loot, exploring territory, and killing monsters, and you lose points by wasting time. Sometimes you would actually have to make a judgment as to whether clearing out the last dregs of a level are worth the investment. If you take too much damage and have to rest up, that could cost you more than you gained for getting in that fight in the first place! But if you ninja past fights that would've been profitable, you fall behind that way too. In this way, players who want to show of their mighty Crawl prowess can compare Ziggurat Challenge scores, and these scores will hopefully have some vague relationship to actual Crawl playing ability.