Tweet
Pre-Post P.S.: This turned out rather long, and unfortunately this forum lacks anything resembling an organizational spoiler box; apologies.
I don't know too much about playing with always_small_levels (since I relied too heavily on teleportation back when I was seriously considering it, and only flipped it on when attempting to dive through an annoying dungeon; basically using it like lore Amberite powers), and I think I failed to explain or didn't bother explaining why I liked ironman_rooms last time it came up in chat with Sideways, but now that I have a clearer understanding of his confusion from this thread, I think I can take a much better shot at it.
The comparison between Interesting Rooms and Quests is an apt one, because they're both reorienting away from the normal dungeon gameplay of exploring a steady amount of terrain with floor-loot and killing a steady amount of monsters and uniques with a fairly steady rate of drops. The randomly generated dungeon floors, despite their 'infinite replay value', tend to be most memorable by focal points— uniques of interest, monster pits, vaults, or unusual creature combinations/disasters— and Quests come with a standard focus each (preforming the quest completion goal before leaving or dying), while Greater Vaults have more varied yet less well-delimited versions of the same kind of focal points (find a vault with something(s) you want, then try to conquer/solve the vault even if some of the creatures or their quantity are out of your league)... in addition to some of the random points of interest from normal dungeon floors.
It's likely that for the same reason I preferred Interesting Rooms, I also tried a character when more Quests were added that never lingered at any dungeon depth; instead going straight between town Quests, dungeon Quests, and Dungeon Guardians while spending the minimum necessary time in transit. It wasn't quite possible, especially with the ~CL30 hump, but it was nice while it lasted.
(The comparison between goal-oriented and browsing play reminds me of those studies on the differences between male and female average buying habits: how the former would more often have an ordered list, and would hunt down the objects on that list; how the latter would more often comb all available options, collecting what would be on a list along the way; and how if each group were required to use the methods of the other they would experience mental fatigue well above what could be explained by the time and effort spent. This in turns ties back into the poschzangband-likes due to how one of their greatest challenges is player fatigue leading to mistakes, so you'd expect players to intuitively pick playstyles they find personally less fatiguing as they become more experienced. It's too bad we don't have a more balanced ratio of male/female players, as then we might be able to collect data on if playstyles line up with the buying-habits studies.)
Now, I don't know much about your Disciples, especially since I'm behind on reading logs again, but their apparently auto-generated Quest-likes seem like another mechanic good for partially filling the gap left by ironman_rooms removal. (Although, naturally, nothing can replace it in my heart.)
I don't know too much about playing with always_small_levels (since I relied too heavily on teleportation back when I was seriously considering it, and only flipped it on when attempting to dive through an annoying dungeon; basically using it like lore Amberite powers), and I think I failed to explain or didn't bother explaining why I liked ironman_rooms last time it came up in chat with Sideways, but now that I have a clearer understanding of his confusion from this thread, I think I can take a much better shot at it.
The comparison between Interesting Rooms and Quests is an apt one, because they're both reorienting away from the normal dungeon gameplay of exploring a steady amount of terrain with floor-loot and killing a steady amount of monsters and uniques with a fairly steady rate of drops. The randomly generated dungeon floors, despite their 'infinite replay value', tend to be most memorable by focal points— uniques of interest, monster pits, vaults, or unusual creature combinations/disasters— and Quests come with a standard focus each (preforming the quest completion goal before leaving or dying), while Greater Vaults have more varied yet less well-delimited versions of the same kind of focal points (find a vault with something(s) you want, then try to conquer/solve the vault even if some of the creatures or their quantity are out of your league)... in addition to some of the random points of interest from normal dungeon floors.
It's likely that for the same reason I preferred Interesting Rooms, I also tried a character when more Quests were added that never lingered at any dungeon depth; instead going straight between town Quests, dungeon Quests, and Dungeon Guardians while spending the minimum necessary time in transit. It wasn't quite possible, especially with the ~CL30 hump, but it was nice while it lasted.
(The comparison between goal-oriented and browsing play reminds me of those studies on the differences between male and female average buying habits: how the former would more often have an ordered list, and would hunt down the objects on that list; how the latter would more often comb all available options, collecting what would be on a list along the way; and how if each group were required to use the methods of the other they would experience mental fatigue well above what could be explained by the time and effort spent. This in turns ties back into the poschzangband-likes due to how one of their greatest challenges is player fatigue leading to mistakes, so you'd expect players to intuitively pick playstyles they find personally less fatiguing as they become more experienced. It's too bad we don't have a more balanced ratio of male/female players, as then we might be able to collect data on if playstyles line up with the buying-habits studies.)
Now, I don't know much about your Disciples, especially since I'm behind on reading logs again, but their apparently auto-generated Quest-likes seem like another mechanic good for partially filling the gap left by ironman_rooms removal. (Although, naturally, nothing can replace it in my heart.)
Comment