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chardump here, many in game comments made in history:
I know that my fightless recap is still going on, but in the meantime I thought I'd post a report on a game that I played with modified stairs. The motivation for this game came from the 'make the game harder' thread, in which I made a suggestion to reduce the number of stairs in the last few levels to avoid the 'dive straight from dlevel 50 to dlevel 99 without stopping at all' problem. I made changes to force some exploration of these levels.
These changes are*:
1: If your current level is your max depth level the number of down stairs on the level are:
A: 3 if dlevel <= 25
B: 2 if dlevel <= 50
C: 1 if dlevel > 50
If your current level is less than your max depth level, the stairs situation is normal (3 to 4 down stairs, 1 to 2 up stairs)
2: Teleport level altered so that it always goes up.
3: Deep Descent changed to Alter Reality
4: Create stairs removed (I played a warrior, so this didn't matter)
5: (edit, forgot about this) trap doors were change to 'air columns' that sent you up to the previous level.
The results were that it took me 800k turns to get to dlevel 99, about twice as long as a normal game.
When I got to dlevel 99 I had about enough endgame consumables. 8 big healing potions, 4? banish and 2? mass banish. My equipment needed some work though. This is far different from most games where a lot of the later levels are consumable hunting.
The descent was more fun and more challenging than usual, although, I can see how many people would not enjoy this. I actually enjoy a level clearing style but recognize that it's not the best way to win. I like winning more. However, forcing level exploration to descend is fun for me. Nevertheless, I think something in this vein could be considered for the last 20 levels or so. These are the biggest flyby levels and they should actually have some challenge to them.
The main problem with these modifications was that there were too many levels and the dungeon's difficulty gradient is not high enough. Things don't get harder as fast as they should in the second half of the dungeon. At some points I was too strong for the level and that's where tedium problems come in. Lowering the number of levels could have helped with this. I know this has been noted before.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game**, it was fun and much more challenging than a normal game where you can pretty much descend at will. I wonder if the consumable amount was a fluke, or if this is supposed to be the method you use to find them.
* This was the second incarnation, the first incarnation had only down stairs anytime you were at your max depth. The first character died at dlevel 52 to ab OoD Azriel (the 3rd time I've lost a character to him, my number 1 unique killer!) I decided that restricting stairs on the early levels was not fun at all. Especially, before you have detect stairs ability.
**This was the first game that I ever found a set of PDSM. Randarts were reasonably powerful. Also notable that Sauron's first two attacks were manastorms. 4 out of Morgoth's first 7 attacks were manastorms. Then both forgot that they had the ability to do that.
I know that my fightless recap is still going on, but in the meantime I thought I'd post a report on a game that I played with modified stairs. The motivation for this game came from the 'make the game harder' thread, in which I made a suggestion to reduce the number of stairs in the last few levels to avoid the 'dive straight from dlevel 50 to dlevel 99 without stopping at all' problem. I made changes to force some exploration of these levels.
These changes are*:
1: If your current level is your max depth level the number of down stairs on the level are:
A: 3 if dlevel <= 25
B: 2 if dlevel <= 50
C: 1 if dlevel > 50
If your current level is less than your max depth level, the stairs situation is normal (3 to 4 down stairs, 1 to 2 up stairs)
2: Teleport level altered so that it always goes up.
3: Deep Descent changed to Alter Reality
4: Create stairs removed (I played a warrior, so this didn't matter)
5: (edit, forgot about this) trap doors were change to 'air columns' that sent you up to the previous level.
The results were that it took me 800k turns to get to dlevel 99, about twice as long as a normal game.
When I got to dlevel 99 I had about enough endgame consumables. 8 big healing potions, 4? banish and 2? mass banish. My equipment needed some work though. This is far different from most games where a lot of the later levels are consumable hunting.
The descent was more fun and more challenging than usual, although, I can see how many people would not enjoy this. I actually enjoy a level clearing style but recognize that it's not the best way to win. I like winning more. However, forcing level exploration to descend is fun for me. Nevertheless, I think something in this vein could be considered for the last 20 levels or so. These are the biggest flyby levels and they should actually have some challenge to them.
The main problem with these modifications was that there were too many levels and the dungeon's difficulty gradient is not high enough. Things don't get harder as fast as they should in the second half of the dungeon. At some points I was too strong for the level and that's where tedium problems come in. Lowering the number of levels could have helped with this. I know this has been noted before.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game**, it was fun and much more challenging than a normal game where you can pretty much descend at will. I wonder if the consumable amount was a fluke, or if this is supposed to be the method you use to find them.
* This was the second incarnation, the first incarnation had only down stairs anytime you were at your max depth. The first character died at dlevel 52 to ab OoD Azriel (the 3rd time I've lost a character to him, my number 1 unique killer!) I decided that restricting stairs on the early levels was not fun at all. Especially, before you have detect stairs ability.
**This was the first game that I ever found a set of PDSM. Randarts were reasonably powerful. Also notable that Sauron's first two attacks were manastorms. 4 out of Morgoth's first 7 attacks were manastorms. Then both forgot that they had the ability to do that.