Let's talk mino maze [Archive] - ADOM & Ultimate ADOM Forums

SirTheta

03-03-2014, 05:21 AM

So, there's a huge problem with the mino maze and my dander is finally up enough to post about it. I see no reason to post this as an RFE as I honestly see little chance of maze being changed for the better: the changes required are wide-ranging and have little chance of being adopted as a package. Adopting a couple of these changes doesn't fix anything and potentially just throws off the balance even further (as we see has already happened), though maybe if magic map was disabled, there'd be more of a push to change the stupid thing. Anyway, for your consideration, the post below – in convenient bullet point format.

There's a number of problems with the maze:

The fake levels of the maze make the maze extremely tedious – i.e. it is not fun.
Enough magic map makes the maze trivial. Teleport helps, but magic map is the really broken part.

This obviously gives a huge advantage to spellcasting classes and disadvantages melee classes, on the whole. The maze can be completed "in 10 minutes" once you've retrieved the BUGWIL MM scrolls.

The rewards are insanely good – I've disclaimed the maze before, but you're basically a total idiot if you don't do the maze. Granted, you're practically guaranteed a win at this point anyway, but doing the maze guarantees you a win beyond all possible doubt. It is nearly impossible to screw up after it; this is especially true for low toughness races. Doing the maze is the new grinding for herbs, except the payoff is like an order of magnitude better.

Now, the big one is the rewards, as the rest are easily solved (see solutions below). I'm sure you're wondering why the rewards are too good, so let's go through it!

The minotaur emperor gives +6 To/St/Pe, -8 Wi, 200d10 corruption points. The stat additions work against potentials and do not care about your current value. The Ancient Stone Beast gives +2 St, +4 To for about 4 corruptions.
You get something like 3d2 POGA (I've seen 4 and 5 POGA, I think, so 3d2 is simply a guess).
On top of this you get multiple POCCs and a potion of strength.
Did I mention a random artifact and three random spellbooks? This is not much incentive, in my experience, but I'll mention it anyway.
Oh, did I forget THE BEST WEAPON IN THE GAME? Even without tacking on the vastly improved ROTMC, you get a 4d20+16 weapon (20-96 damage) that "adds" a 40% crit rate. Let's not even talk about backstabbing.

So what's the tally here – normally, at least +12 St/+10 To, a nice +4 Wi after you've trained Wi back up w/ morgia, +4 Dx. In other words, the stat gains are utterly gamebreaking. Sois the weapon.

Solutions:

There are a couple solutions to fake levels. My preferred one, as I'm sure y'all know, is removing the fake levels. They're the real culprit of making the maze tedious – without them, it's a more..."classic" maze experience that isn't nearly as frustrating. The maze could be made a level or so deeper to compensate (i.e. ML8, 9 or 10 would have mino emp). Making the maze deeper should not be done if other suggestions (like disabling MM) are implemented. Gut was discussing on IRC how a fake level could be made apparent in some way – e.g. it contains only corruption traps. I think this is both neat and somewhat obvious to first time, unspoiled maze visitors, so it's another possible solution
Disable all magic mapping (i.e. including Knowledge of the Ancients) on all maze levels. Optionally, also disable teleportation until the minotaur emperor has been killed (or disable and put an exit at bottom of maze – that would be pretty cool and a bit of a mindfuck – rather appropriate).
Rewards solution is multipart:

Put the corpse back to +3 St/To/Pe. Make it -4 Wi instead of -8. Stat additions should ignore potentials and current values as it currently does. Make it give 200d20 corruption points with a floor of 2000 corruption points.
1d6 POGA.
POCC, potions of strength, random artifact, and three random spellbooks stay – they are nice added incentive, but not primary reason for visiting. [maybe make it 4 spellbooks and put one on each mino mage, somewhat unorthodox solution that just occurred to me].
Put the cow axe back at 3d20+16. It was already a superb and very desirable weapon in 1.1.1 and would still be such. It would actually still be better in 1.2.0 because various other aspects of the game have been fixed (ROTMC gives +Crit, backstabbing does good things, etc.).

also, fix orb guardian corpses, they're still worthless. playing corruption lottery with 4 corruptions for +2 St and +4 To is laughable for most. right idea was had with mino emp corpse. - even ASB with +4 St/To for about 3 corruptions would at least make me consider it.

JellySlayer

03-03-2014, 05:43 AM

Removing the fake levels, eliminating the use of magic map in the maze, and setting the rewards back to somewhere between the current state and 1.1.1 seems reasonable to me. I think it's fine to keep the axe more or less as-is and remove the PoGA and the free artifact. +6 St, +6 To and the improved axe would still be pretty nice rewards all things considered.

Honestly, there really isn't any great solution to the Maze because the fundamental problem is that maze levels aren't fun to do, period. They take 10x the effort to explore as regular levels, and the exploration doesn't feel particularly productive or fruitful; they're just endless and tedious, all the more so with the trick walls and secret doors everywhere you need to check for.

elenie

03-03-2014, 05:54 AM

I like these suggestions. I have done the maze only a few times in 1.2.0 because it is SO tedious. Yes, the improved rewards are nice, but they don't address the tedium issue. It is also a bit too random, so if you get lucky or have lots of Magic Mapping, it's bearable, but if you get unlucky you sure will have a horrible time in there :-)

So if anything's done to change the maze, it'd be nice if it became less of a slog. Even if that means upping the difficulty, and/or nerfing the rewards I'd still be a lot more likely to go in there than I am now.

Stingray1

03-03-2014, 06:11 AM

Didn't read any posts. The maze is fine as is. The rewards is just enough incentive. I'd hate to see the struggle to get to the bottom level removed, it is what makes the maze such a wonderful place. Magic mapping is available for the weak minded.

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 07:49 AM

Ever since I started playing 1.2.0 I have always gone to the minotaur maze. I think the rewards are quite powerful, but the only thing I agree with is that magic mapping should be disabled (which will bring the rewards in line with the difficulty of a real maze). I know that if you try to read a scroll of magic mapping on the final level the scroll is torn to pieces by some force. I don't see why magic mapping cannot just be completely disabled, since it does disadvantage the melee classes (and I have only played melee classes or classes that do not have a super high rate of spellbook drops, so I have only had magic mapping available to me once unless it was through the Bug Temple scrolls).

grobblewobble

03-03-2014, 08:37 AM

If you want to see a real maze, try the Orc quest in Adom 2. No fake levels, but so large that it doesn't matter. Only took me about five hours to find the bottom. And that was with the shard of elemental earth (which lets you see and walk through walls).

Back on topic, I think that making the fake levels in some way different would be a good idea. Nerfing the corpse and the weapon back to their 1.1 versions, too. The axe already got a boost because 2-handed weapons have been buffed in general. And 4-5 PoGA is a bit much, yeah.

I think disabling magic mapping is a bad idea. A melee class can get it from the bug temple. Disabling magic mapping would hurt everyone, melee classes as much as casters. It would mean that the tedious, grinding way becomes the only way to do the maze..

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 10:19 AM

I think disabling magic mapping is a bad idea. A melee class can get it from the bug temple. Disabling magic mapping would hurt everyone, melee classes as much as casters. It would mean that the tedious, grinding way becomes the only way to do the maze..

The tedious, grinding (although I don't see how it is grinding) way is the only way to do a maze. Thomas Biskup himself said that he was not interested in making optional areas easier, but I don't know if he has anything against making them harder. He chose to increase the rewards to make up for the difficulty of the maze. It just doesn't make sense to me to decrease the rewards again. People may end up complaining that the rewards are not worth it again (at least for melee classes who will find it difficult to clear the bug temple without a lot of brute force or good ranged attacks). In my experience, the scrolls of magic mapping only map out one fake descent, and I have to walk through the rest of the maze the tedious way (usually I only have to go down one other set of stairs all the way through to get to the final level after that, but the mindcrafter I am playing right now had to map two and one half fake descents, one and one half of those by walking). I did get lucky once, and only once, with the scrolls of magic mapping, and managed to get all the way to the bottom with two or three scrolls to spare.

However, it just doesn't make any sense to have magical areas that do not prohibit you from doing things that make the place trivial (for instance, consider how Darkforge was changed to make it much harder to conduct a raid, or how it is not possible anymore to just bolt all the bugs in the temple and wilderness area to death). Following that line of reasoning, I don't see why the maze just doesn't allow magic mapping at all. As I said before, the last level does not allow you to use scrolls of magic mapping, and presumably the spell fails as well. Thomas Biskup did that for a reason, although it is more or less pointless because it is not hard to just use detect monsters to find the general area to teleport to.

In my opinion, consistency demands that the whole place forbid the use of magic mapping. It is a maze. It is supposed to be tedious. You shouldn't be able to just zap a spell a couple of times, teleport to the stairs, repeat a couple of times, and kill the emperor. You might as well not call it a maze if you can do that. Surely the minotaur emperor knows that there exist spells that allow one to map levels, so surely he would tell his mages to put an enchantment on the maze to prevent the use of such spells. Hell, they did it on the emperor's level (I know that this is more or less an appeal to realism, but it applies logically just the same, since it is supposed to be a maze, and mazes are supposed to be tedious). To make up for the tedium, just keep the rewards the same. It is not that hard to walk the maze. My mindcrafter walked one and a half false descents, past the 90 day limit, and only got two corruptions. If you find it to be too tedious if Biskup (hopefully) changes it to prevent magic mapping (which in my opinion is the only thing that needs to be changed), then don't do it. It is optional. It doesn't make sense to me that people think it is necessary to do the maze because the rewards are so good, and then complain that it is tedious and bash their heads against their keyboards every time they find a fake level 6 or have to actually search a MAZE for the stairs down.

Utnapishtim

03-03-2014, 12:17 PM

As a new player I have only done the maze a half a dozen times, and have mostly found the experience as a whole quite enjoyable, although I can certainly see the reason for varying opinions. A couple of points:

I think the significant difference between blessed magic mapping scrolls and the mapping spell should be noted: with the spell, even after dozens of castings, there are still some unknown areas that might contain the downstairs. Using the spell has not made the maze feel trivial at all, while using a lot of blessed scrolls probably would (have never tried).

The concept of a fake level seems peculiar. The impression that a new player gets while doing the maze a couple of times, is that it is quite natural network of interconnected levels, having 0..2 downstairs, the level number just indicating the depth. I don't really understand some of the discussion about giving more hints to new players as to the "secret" of the maze.

As for the difficulty of optional areas mentioned above, it seems that one central point the OP is trying to make is that the maze might not feel optional with the current rewards. For example, if playing with a somewhat weak character, who might be in danger during the late game, it is not a defensible tactic to forego the massive stat increases etc. This may be a good point. The maze is now always part of my itinerary whenever I have means of coping with it (some way to deal with the mages, confusion resistance, preferably teleport).

When appropriately prepared, the maze is not very dangerous. The tedium is manageable, and it makes you feel you have worked to earn the rewards. However, as there is tedium involved, different people have different thresholds, and OP is obviously right in that the melee classes have a significant disadvantage, it does seem a good idea for the maze be clearly optional also tactically. Perhaps the current rewards are just a tad too much.

To sum up, I would love to see there not being any ways of getting the current rewards trivially, the melee/spellcaster balance to get addressed somehow, and the Maze to made a bit less "mandatory" from a tactical viewpoint.

SirTheta

03-03-2014, 12:36 PM

Well, I'll try to explain why I think the fake levels are a problem, which is something gut hit on in IRC.

One problem is that they force you to explore every inch of some levels that have no staircases. Since you have now way of knowing what is fake and what is not, this is a large investment of time for 0 payoff - which is frustrating. Removing the fake levels removes this; if you've found a staircase, you've found a way down and you don't have to map the level all the way to that tiny little dark spot in the corner because it could contain a stair. (this is gut's point, and it is really the biggest one: it adds a large amount of tedium and time on top of already finding the staircases, which is tedious)

Relatedly, the not knowing bit becomes really frustrating. Spending 15 minutes mapping out a level to find no staircase only to have to backtrack but not know if you're going to find the down staircase this time or spend another hour in the maze is just blaaaaagh. Knowing that you're making real progress is half the battle.

Another problem is that it [artificially] makes the maze more dangerous. Mino mages & trap destruction can be dealt with, but adding in illusionary walls [I find them fairly easy to find, but I imagine some others don't] and fake levels [especially this one] increase the potential for stat draining about twofold on average, and sometimes a lot more. The same effect could be achieved without fake levels by linearly increasing from ML1 to ML7 the monster generation from current levels to, say, 2x current levels, without making the player spend an hour in the maze.

There's probably some other reasons they are bad that people can chime in on, but this is why I think they should be removed.

@Utnaphistim: You're right about the spell, but I did the maze in p7 with the spell and found that it made it significantly easier. Not blessed MM-easy, but much easier than exploring [since my current method is to go down as far as possible, then up, down, etc., etc. and going up by a different route once ML5/ML6 down staircases are exhausted. It works somewhat well. Adding spell/non-blessed MM means you can spam the spell to look for staircases (at least until you run out of PP)]. Otherwise, your post is largely what I'm going for, yep :)

Soirana

03-03-2014, 01:25 PM

Blasphemous

03-03-2014, 01:37 PM

The fake levels of the maze make the maze extremely tedious – i.e. it is not fun.
Item destruction in BDC is very tedious and no fun.
Item destruction in ToEF is very tedious and no fun.
Corruption in deep CoC is tedious, annoying and no fun.
Etc, etc, etc, these are all elements of the game, that's how they have been designed.
Maze has always had fake levels, I don't understand why you suddenly see this as a huge problem. It's not a problem, it's a unique feature of an optional dungeon.
You can complete the game just fine without going to the maze though admittedly the prizes make it much easier in the end game.

Enough magic map makes the maze trivial. Teleport helps, but magic map is the really broken part. This obviously gives a huge advantage to spellcasting classes and disadvantages melee classes, on the whole. The maze can be completed "in 10 minutes" once you've retrieved the BUGWIL MM scrolls.
Caster classes arguably benefit the least from the maze prizes - aotme is by no means necessary, top weapon or not. Spellbooks are generic and nothing that can't be obtained in library just a few squares away.
Random artifact is often exactly that - very random and very useless, at least in my games. Though the recent one with leather armor was good, previous random artifacts such as soaker, black tome and perion were a total disappointment.
Casters don't need to eat the mino emp, or even shouldn't. At this point their willpower is often above the 25 mark which means they can't restore it with morgia. We all know how important willpower is to casters.
I don't even have to mention that bugwil interior itself is already an extremely dangerous place. Getting the scrolls among other items is a nice payoff for taking the risk of losing your char, especially since it has to be done before level 30 if you actually intend to use the scrolls in the maze.

All in all, casters have the easiest time in the maze but also almost half the prizes are pretty useless. The theory about MM from bugwil making it super easy is a very big stretch.

The rewards are insanely good – I've disclaimed the maze before, but you're basically a total idiot if you don't do the maze. Granted, you're practically guaranteed a win at this point anyway, but doing the maze guarantees you a win beyond all possible doubt. It is nearly impossible to screw up after it; this is especially true for low toughness races. Doing the maze is the new grinding for herbs, except the payoff is like an order of magnitude better.

An order of magnitude, really? I don't agree at all, also there is no way to compare the maze to herb grinding, this is just an entirely different league. Additionally, it's certainly possible to screw up after this, maze prizes don't have a magical quality of winning the game for you. You still have to be very careful and watch your steps, which is absolutely true even without doing the maze. Also, if you're a low toughness char, maze can be pretty difficult and requires lots of careful preparations, just like any dangerous/tedious area.

The minotaur emperor gives +6 To/St/Pe, -8 Wi, 200d10 corruption points. The stat additions work against potentials and do not care about your current value. The Ancient Stone Beast gives +2 St, +4 To for about 4 corruptions.
Here's what you need to do to get ASB corpse: descend to ~D:20, use guaranteed wand of digging, spam fire bolt, press "," to pick up free +10 Wi, full, on-demand heal and a corpse.
Compare this to the effort necessary to get emp mino corpse. You see now why it's so good?

You get something like 3d2 POGA (I've seen 4 and 5 POGA, I think, so 3d2 is simply a guess). On top of this you get multiple POCCs and a potion of strength.
Yes, the above potions are of course very nice, but this serves as the main focus point of the maze because it benefits all classes, unlike aotme or the corpse.
If anything, this is where I can agree on some reductions, those PoCC make orb guardian corpses obsolete other than for consumption.

Did I mention a random artifact and three random spellbooks? This is not much incentive, in my experience, but I'll mention it anyway.
Random artifact that typically sucks 75% of the time or is at least meh since you already have another one in the respective slot.
3 random spellbooks that very often turn out to be slow poison, fire bolt and know alignment. Very useful indeed, the same amount of spellbooks you get on a lucky roll in a big ID tension room. Totally forgettable.

Oh, did I forget THE BEST WEAPON IN THE GAME? Even without tacking on the vastly improved ROTMC, you get a 4d20+16 weapon (20-96 damage) that "adds" a 40% crit rate. Let's not even talk about backstabbing.
Which comes at a price - you lose the shield slot, you lose any pole arm bonuses you might have had, your DV practically goes to one digit numbers at berserk and barely goes beyond 25 at normal. Also you need to reserve 1200 stones of carry weight, and the only intrinsics that it grants are already covered by guaranteed early AMW. In practice, it's not like aotme allows you to slay all things with just one hit. Sure, mundane monsters go quickly but that is to be expected.

So what's the tally here – normally, at least +12 St/+10 To, a nice +4 Wi after you've trained Wi back up w/ morgia, +4 Dx. In other words, the stat gains are utterly gamebreaking. Sois the weapon.
As I have already mentioned above, those stat gains aren't useful for casters that much since they come at a very hefty cost of willpower which may often be untrainable to pre-consumption values.
The weapon is not game breaking; it's powerful but certainly its usage comes at a risk.

There are a couple solutions to fake levels. My preferred one, as I'm sure y'all know, is removing the fake levels. They're the real culprit of making the maze tedious – without them, it's a more..."classic" maze experience that isn't nearly as frustrating. The maze could be made a level or so deeper to compensate (i.e. ML8, 9 or 10 would have mino emp). Making the maze deeper should not be done if other suggestions (like disabling MM) are implemented. Gut was discussing on IRC how a fake level could be made apparent in some way – e.g. it contains only corruption traps. I think this is both neat and somewhat obvious to first time, unspoiled maze visitors, so it's another possible solution.

I think there should be *at least* 10 levels in the maze rather than 7 and adequately more fake levels. This way you really ensure only very dedicated players (as in: prepared PCs) can actually tackle it. If they are not prepared, they will fail or even die - the maze is a late game area and should offer both the late game challenges and late game prizes. If you can actually conquer all the things that are against you in the maze, the prize doesn't seem to be OP at all.

Disable all magic mapping (i.e. including Knowledge of the Ancients) on all maze levels. Optionally, also disable teleportation until the minotaur emperor has been killed (or disable and put an exit at bottom of maze – that would be pretty cool and a bit of a mindfuck – rather appropriate).

No, no, no. This is another case of "disable this or disable that" for no good reason. There are many other ways to make the place more challenging.
Why introduce certain elements to the game when you disable their usage in every second or third dungeon?
It's already annoying that teleportation control is disabled in Dfg. I'd rather have teleportation disabled entirely, not just the control, so teleportitis won't be as annoying. I could go perfectly well without being able to teleport in Dfg *at all*.

What is the other use of MM scrolls or the spell, other than in the maze? One can perhaps be used in VDDL to find the wand. Another one in SMC if you happen to go through it with a high level char. MM is very useful in ID when you plan an ultra (not many people do that). That's it.
MM is a convenience spell/scroll and should not be disallowed in the maze because the result is simply that it becomes a near obsolete feature - I play wizards often and the actual manual exploration of levels is more fun than just magic mapping the down staircase and telelporting around, though not always.
Even in the mino maze, MM has costs - it uses significant amount of power points that have to be replenished somehow - either with scrolls which you will quickly run out of or waiting on the spot, which incurs corruption points (significant rate in the maze) and puts you at risk of getting attacked by some nasty denizens of the place.
I won't even comment on telelportation since a lot of people see it as game breaking in every situation and seek to disable it everywhere, which is simply wrong.
It's been there forever and it gives you a nice advantage, that's part of the game. Any char can use it, a wand is guaranteed, booze is common, though of course wizards have it slightly easier.

Rewards solution is multipart:
Put the corpse back to +3 St/To/Pe. Make it -4 Wi instead of -8. Stat additions should ignore potentials and current values as it currently does. Make it give 200d20 corruption points with a floor of 2000 corruption points.

I can agree with this, I don't care about the corpse since I don't eat it anyway, like ever.

1d6 POGA, POCC, potions of strength, random artifact, and three random spellbooks stay – they are nice added incentive, but not primary reason for visiting. [maybe make it 4 spellbooks and put one on each mino mage, somewhat unorthodox solution that just occurred to me].

This is also acceptable, I like the idea about mino mages holding the spellboks, though maybe they could be more specific: guaranteed spellbooks of disarm trap, teleportation and MM?
After all somebody who reached this point already, doesn't much need them, but if they happen to not have those spells yet, they now will, and the spells themselves are related to the maze.

Put the cow axe back at 3d20+16. It was already a superb and very desirable weapon in 1.1.1 and would still be such. It would actually still be better in 1.2.0 because various other aspects of the game have been fixed (ROTMC gives +Crit, backstabbing does good things, etc.).

I strongly disagree. The axe is what it was supposed to be. It wasn't a worthy weapon in 1.1.1. The tradeoff of extreme weight, no shield using, no pole arm DV bonuses and generally low DV are already sufficient to make it a weapon to consider before use.

Fix orb guardian corpses, they're still worthless. playing corruption lottery with 4 corruptions for +2 St and +4 To is laughable for most. right idea was had with mino emp corpse. - even ASB with +4 St/To for about 3 corruptions would at least make me consider it.

Good idea, make a separate RFE and you have my vote for sure.

Soirana

03-03-2014, 01:47 PM

Here's what you need to do to get ASB corpse: descend to ~D:20, use guaranteed wand of digging, spam fire bolt, press "," to pick up free +10 Wi, full, on-demand heal and a corpse.
Compare this to the effort necessary to get emp mino corpse. You see now why it's so good?

Pretty sure Earth temple is not on D20 and fire bolt won't get you very far in it.

Blasphemous

03-03-2014, 02:00 PM

Sorry, my bad I meant SFB of course, which gives meager bonuses.

ASB however isn't significantly more difficult or tedious because it's in a location that you have to visit anyway, in order to complete the game. It's not optional.
ASB's corpse will always be generated for you if you intend to finish the game, whether you want to eat it or not.
It is also not restricted by level, you can reach lvl 50 and then dispatch ASB with ease. The same cannot be said about mino emp corpse.

sylph

03-03-2014, 02:22 PM

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 02:26 PM

I think the significant difference between blessed magic mapping scrolls and the mapping spell should be noted: with the spell, even after dozens of castings, there are still some unknown areas that might contain the downstairs. Using the spell has not made the maze feel trivial at all, while using a lot of blessed scrolls probably would (have never tried).

As for the difficulty of optional areas mentioned above, it seems that one central point the OP is trying to make is that the maze might not feel optional with the current rewards. For example, if playing with a somewhat weak character, who might be in danger during the late game, it is not a defensible tactic to forego the massive stat increases etc. This may be a good point. The maze is now always part of my itinerary whenever I have means of coping with it (some way to deal with the mages, confusion resistance, preferably teleport).

To sum up, I would love to see there not being any ways of getting the current rewards trivially, the melee/spellcaster balance to get addressed somehow, and the Maze to made a bit less "mandatory" from a tactical viewpoint.

Magic mapping (the spell) certainly does make the maze trivial for caster classes. It even made the maze trivial for my dwarven paladin, which was the only class, caster or otherwise, that even managed to get magic map before the maze. Oftentimes the stairs were revealed in 2-3 castings. Only once or twice did I have to cast it 10 times or so to reveal every nook and cranny. Dwarven paladins don't have many PP. Blessed scrolls of power (which are plentiful) have received a significant boost. Praying for PP is not very commonly done up to this point in the game and is not very expensive.

I will never, never, NEVER understand the reasoning of some people who believe that certain optional quests in the game are "necessary" because of the advantage that they give. Obvious examples include saving Khelavaster, completing the maze, going to the Bug Temple, and sucking up to the cat lord. There are people who go to the Bug Temple and proceed to get slaughtered, even end-game characters. There are people who grind forever to save Khelavaster, even if they are not going for a special ending. The cat lord receives special notice, as there are people who shift-Q after killing a cat. This is all just ridiculous in my opinion, and not how I would choose to play, but it is not an issue. It's all good and dandy if that is how you like to play, but insisting that the game be changed to suit this kind of behavior is even more ridiculous (some people even think it would be okay to have a guaranteed amulet of life saving somewhere, with some high cost attached to getting it. This cost is irrelevant when every ending is an ultra-ending, though).

SirTheta even said something along the lines that if you are able to consider going to the maze at all, you probably will be able to win the game anyways, so the boosts the maze gives characters are not necessary to win the game. Optional places are optional. If people feel the rewards make it necessary, then show some constraint and don't go there. Or do go there. But please don't complain about it when you do.

Blasphemous

03-03-2014, 02:53 PM

There are people who grind forever to save Khelavaster, even if they are not going for a special ending.
I try to save Khelavaster every time, even if I know for sure I will not do an ultra (because I'm already crowned L+ and no crone/ratling quests done).
The main reason to save Khelly and even grind a rods for a long time to do that, is because 6 SoCRs that he provides when saved are equivalent to two wishes, not to mention spellbooks for wizards.
Though occasionally when I already have scrolls from mystic and no perspective to get significantly corrupted, I'll just let him die.

The cat lord receives special notice, as there are people who shift-Q after killing a cat. This is all just ridiculous in my opinion, and not how I would choose to play, but it is not an issue. It's all good and dandy if that is how you like to play, but insisting that the game be changed to suit this kind of behavior is even more ridiculous.

I hate the idea of cats and the consequences of killing them but I take that as an inherent element of the game that is not subjective to change (because of how amazing the ring is). Sometimes I decide early on that I won't get the ring and select to slay and eat all cats found, it's all nice and fine.
However, I will occasionally shift+Q chars when some crucial (from the pure *role-playing* perspective) element of the game is lost to me - such as once when my mindcrafter made a terrible mistake of hitting invisible cat lord because I forgot to equip AMW.
The whole idea back then was to play a char that will eventually get the ring; losing it meant my game was not enjoyable anymore and thus forfeit. I don't see a problem with that and I didn't complain about the game rules or ask for it to be changed.
I made a new char and succeeded this time.

The same could be said about mino maze. I feel like SirTheta always discarded the maze because it wasn't worth the effort.
He didn't complain back then but now that the prizes justify the effort, he suddenly realized it's annoying as fuck and tedious and boring and what not and wants it changed.
Sorry buddy, that's not the way it works.
Few people grinded the maze in 1.1.1 and didn't much complain.
For the most part, everybody knew it was just a point of honor and bragging ("I've done the maze with an orcish merchant dual wielding logs, wow") rather than to get some game-changing items, which simply were not there.
Suddenly the rewards were upped and some people don't like it simply because they don't want to grind through it and get the prize while other players don't have any such qualms.
Just live with that, that's how the maze was conceived, that's how it should remain.

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 02:59 PM

Blasphemous

03-03-2014, 03:04 PM

I don't see a problem with that either, as long as you don't come onto the forums and suggest that cats should initially be non-hostile or some such nonsense. That is what I am having an issue with, the fact that some people are suggesting that certain optional quests be made easier. I don't think SirTheta is just saying that it should be made less tedious, as he is also suggesting that magic mapping be disabled. However, doing away with the false levels and then nerfing the rewards is not a direction I want to see the game take, and one I highly doubt will happen, as Thomas Biskup has already changed the maze for the better. I don't think he will like that people are now complaining about the rewards being TOO good.

The problem is you can never satisfy everybody. Some people will always complain, there is no common denominator for what is too good or what is too nerfed, as people have varying definitions for each.
Some are more or less vocal about that too, like me and my pure hatred towards teleportitis and unending desire for metallic blankets to protect equipment from lightning damage. I guess we'll have to live with that.

JellySlayer

03-03-2014, 03:12 PM

I don't think he will like that people are now complaining about the rewards being TOO good.

I don't really think this is the case. The whole point of having prereleases is so that TB can get community feedback on how to make the game better (as well as getting a goodly amount of beta-testing done for it). There have been several issues where TB has had to revisit an implementation after it became clear from testing that the change didn't work out. For example, the change preventing summoners from dropping loot has been reversed; Thrundarr's first quest and the Thieves' Guild quest have been revisited two or three times now. Simply because the change has been made does not mean that it cannot be unmade if there is a compelling reason to do so.

[edit]Other examples:

Item destruction in BDC is very tedious and no fun.

Item destruction in the BDC was already nerfed in some early gamma version. It's pretty minor. I've never lost anything there of any significance.

Item destruction in ToEF is very tedious and no fun.

There's a guaranteed ring of ice in the game now.

Corruption in deep CoC is tedious, annoying and no fun.

This effect will be reduced substantially in pre21.

grobblewobble

03-03-2014, 03:22 PM

I think there should be *at least* 10 levels in the maze rather than 7 and adequately more fake levels.
Oh you! :)

The problem is you can never satisfy everybody. Some people will always complain
Very true. You literally can't make everybody happy.

SirTheta

03-03-2014, 03:25 PM

The same could be said about mino maze. I feel like SirTheta always discarded the maze because it wasn't worth the effort.
He didn't complain back then but now that the prizes justify the effort, he suddenly realized it's annoying as fuck and tedious and boring and what not and wants it changed.
Sorry buddy, that's not the way it works.
Few people grinded the maze in 1.1.1 and didn't much complain.
For the most part, everybody knew it was just a point of honor and bragging ("I've done the maze with an orcish merchant dual wielding logs, wow") rather than to get some game-changing items, which simply were not there.
Suddenly the rewards were upped and some people don't like it simply because they don't want to grind through it and get the prize while other players don't have any such qualms.
Just live with that, that's how the maze was conceived, that's how it should remain.I don't quite have time atm to respond to all new posts in this thread, but I do want to dispel this point [actually this turned into longer post about various things, too]. You're absolutely wrong - I did the maze twice in 1.1.1 [even in 1.1.1 the corpse was quite good as was the axe]. For example, you can view my badass 1.1.1 true berserking, AOTME-wielding Gray Elf Priest here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7494096/adom/GePr_sunshy.flg. That character was simply superb, but I spent over an hour dicking around in the maze before giving up and just using the top trap trick. I probably would've done it more after that, but I then focused on poorly done speedruns for the remainder of my 1.1.1 times. I also did the maze in p7, before the rewards were adjusted, on an MeBf that badly needed toughness, again using top trap trick/magic map. [p.s. RNG really set me up because I got super lucky on my first run (w/o magic map) and did maze in like 10 mins without encountering any false levels. That is not how maze goes 95% of the time as I've later found out]

I also did complain back then - I commented on the tediousness of the Maze in grobble's RFE that got the rewards changed, and this post is partially a restatement of what I and others said there (you can view it at http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=1507). I've always maintained that the fake levels are the #1 problem with the maze and they've always been central to my complaints here and in IRC. I am definitely not the only one who has complained about this - it's actually relatively common.

I've also (successfully) done the maze 3 times after the change to rewards (once in p17, twice in p20), out of 7 winners [duelist and beastfighter were minor/serious attempts at speedrun, weaponsmith and assassin gave up (if I'm recalling correctly and according to my kill list) because I hate the place so much].

So, I think I have very good view of how rewards worked (for example, how good the cow axe was in 1.1.1 and how good it would be in 1.2.0 at 3d20+16 with all the changes to 2H weapons, +Crit, backstabbing, etc.), work, and what should be changed to make the maze less tedious (having tried various strategies: top track trip [i.e. no fake levels], magic mapping, brute force). The substance of the change is debatable - for example, Soirana's portal idea is kind of cool - but, imo, there's no way the maze is a good location if fake levels are left as they are [btw, fake levels are not like dead ends, which already exist in maze, or even like illusionary walls, which are frustrating sure, but kind of cool! I've laid out why I think fake levels are a bad design in previous post]. I started this thread mostly to just vent about how wrong I think the change was (I like complaining ;)) and to let people suggest things "off the record".*

As an addendum: due to the change in potentials, I feel that spellcasters and elf classes (which are the majority of spellcasters, from what I see) benefit just as much (and sometimes more) than melee classes because the +10 To is such a huge change for them. Once you have that much HP, the game becomes a lot easier because you can slip up *a lot* and still not die.

*not really off the record since TB reads many posts and I'm sure he'll see this eventually, but w/e, I feel like there is more free-form discussion when it is not official RFE.

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 03:45 PM

I don't really think this is the case. The whole point of having prereleases is so that TB can get community feedback on how to make the game better (as well as getting a goodly amount of beta-testing done for it). There have been several issues where TB has had to revisit an implementation after it became clear from testing that the change didn't work out. For example, the change preventing summoners from dropping loot has been reversed; Thrundarr's first quest and the Thieves' Guild quest have been revisited two or three times now. Simply because the change has been made does not mean that it cannot be unmade if there is a compelling reason to do so.

I think that the minotaur maze is a special case because he has mentioned that he did not like the idea of making an optional quest that is clearly a challenge for good reason easier. Most of the things that are changed back and forth are not of that nature. This is why he boosted the rewards rather than making the maze easier. Now people are suggesting that the rewards are too powerful. You can either switch it back to the way it was, or you can nerf the rewards. Nerfing the rewards (a subjective definition, of course) is being suggested to go along with a nerfing of the maze in general, and Biskup has already said he doesn't like making optional quests easier. I'm sure he will consider something to change, but I would hope he doesn't change his mind and make the maze less maze-like.

Soirana

03-03-2014, 03:49 PM

Most of the things that are changed back and forth are not of that nature.

Can I get list of these things?

Dwarven quests and thieve guild are totally optional sidequests which were tinekered multiple times. So these are okay and maze is not? Strange....

Blasphemous

03-03-2014, 03:53 PM

I like complaining too ;)
I can endlessly do that regarding teleportitis and lack of means to prevent item destruction in BDC, but oh well, that's the way it is.
I rarely did the maze in 1.1.1, the rewards were just not what I'd have expected from such a place, though I still considered it a nice challenge and simply did this if I had enough surplus resources like means of healing, teleportation and magic mapping.
This has always been the idea behind optionality - you do it if you deem it plausible, given your resources and how your char manages to overcome various equally dangerous parts of the game.
However, even now, I don't feel like it's such a bad place - it sure is annoying but (for me) not nearly as annoying as teleportitis or getting my items destroyed by blue dragons.
Maybe it's because you can somewhat control how nasty the maze is by excessive preparations and you can't really do that in BDC or with intrinsic teleportitis.
I suppose it's just a matter of personal approach - despite me being against any further changes done to the maze, beside ones already implemented, I can relate to you because I understand what it means to have annoying stuff in the game you like playing so much.

EDIT:

Dwarven quests and thieve guild are totally optional sidequests which were tinekered multiple times. So these are okay and maze is not? Strange....

I don't ever bother with thieves' quests. Ever. I have literally played two characters that learned pick pockets from Yergius and that's it. The game plays almost exactly the same if you completely skip that part.
As for dwarven quests - they are optional indeed but also doable on low PC levels, without much preparation, without any level limits and with rewards that are more utilitarian rather than combat-oriented in mino maze (except the lead-filled mace but frankly it's cumbersome to use and I typically do dwarven quests to get potions of extra healing, wands, identification of items and blankets).
None of this can be said about the maze, that's why even though both are optional, they are not subject to the same mechanics.

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 04:52 PM

Can I get list of these things?

Dwarven quests and thieve guild are totally optional sidequests which were tinekered multiple times. So these are okay and maze is not? Strange....

These quests are optional, but are not particularly challenging. The dwarven quests, as Blasphemous stated, give many utilitarian items that help the survival of low-level PCs. The items are invaluable for newbies, and even for experience players who get into a bind.

The minotaur maze is meant to be a challenge, and the rewards reflect this. It is not the place for low-level PCs or for people who don't like doing difficult things for good rewards. None of the things you get in the maze are as useful for progressing through the point in the game which one is at to enter the maze as compared to the dwarven quest rewards. Chances are that the ToEF has already been done before entering the maze, so the hardest part of the game is over. This is what I mean by it being optional, and a challenge. A challenge that should not be made easier.

Soirana

03-03-2014, 05:02 PM

The only challenge in maze is tedium. From what I get is not meant not to be game of tedium. If there were dangerous ord of minotaurs to plow through I would agree but there is not.

As dwarven quests not being combat orientated - good artifact weapon, fireball wand, full heals to support combat and for some classes nearly full set of mithril armor. Not combat orientated definitely.

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 05:26 PM

But the dwarven quests and their rewards are found in the early-game, and as such they help low-level PCs, regardless of whether the items are combat-oriented or not. Most players always do the dwarven quests, barring a ridiculously rare first quest monster. I do, however, agree that the maze should have more powerful minotaurs, and that there should be more monsters in general. It is mostly walking as is. However, I don't see a problem with the main challenge being tedium. A game should not have it's main challenge as being one of tedium, but it is fitting for a maze. Mazes are tedious, and this point is made in the minotaur maze.

Qui

03-03-2014, 05:34 PM

I think the Maze was fine in 1.1.1. You wanted the axe and had means to do it, you did it. Otherwise not. Unless you wanted to do it as a challenge/for fun/because you're a completionist/whatever. And that's how "optional content" should be, imho. Right now, the rewards are way overdone. Improved axe, PoGA, PoCC, artifact... everyone wants that. And some players might feel like they have to do it, or they'll be disadvantaged.

What's more, I think that right now the Maze has the best guaranteed rewards out of any place in the game. Only lucky greater vaults or Casino might be better. And it's a mid-game place, not a late-game one, at least so indicate level restrictions.

Soirana

03-03-2014, 05:46 PM

Most players always do the dwarven quests, barring a ridiculously rare first quest monster.
The question is why they do so and answer is because effort/reward ratio is very good.

Currently maze's effort/reward is at least decent too not sure if it at point there players start think of it as must do, but likely close.

I do not get what level thing should mean. In Adom after ToEF+Casino restock part is already rather boring so I would say mid too late game needs more fixing than early parts in which RNG provides enough entertainment.

GordonOverkill

03-03-2014, 06:13 PM

The only challenge in maze is tedium. From what I get is not meant not to be game of tedium. If there were dangerous ord of minotaurs to plow through I would agree but there is not.

Soirana-standard-mistake: The only challange for you is tedium. I know of many players (including myself) who got into many different dangerous situations withing the maze because of hunger,traps, the emperor and his minons...

All in all I like the maze in it's current state, because it feels very "mazy". It can sometimes get so tedious that you are close to losing your mind in there... in my eyes that's what mazes are supposed to do. 90% of all video game mazes kinda suck because they lack this characteristic. If you are not in the mood for the maze-experience, just don't do it. Though I wouldn't bother nerfing the rewards a little.

About those guardian corpses not being worth eating: Dudes, are you totally crazy? Why the hell should any but the most mental maniac even consider eating the epitomes of chaos itself? And why the bloody hell should it give you a serious advantage to eat those beasts??? If there's anything in the world that you wouldn't want for lunch, at least in my eyes it's the orb guardians.

SirTheta

03-03-2014, 06:26 PM

Just gonna drop back in to say that the maze is really quite easy [assuming you are hitting it after Casino, very good assumption]. There is basically no challenge but tedium and you don't have to be the best ADOM player to be able to do it without any difficulty. Almost any stupidity in maze ['cept like leaving AMW to mark illusionary wall, which I did do once] can be solved by use of piety and optionally resurfacing.

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 06:28 PM

All in all I like the maze in it's current state, because it feels very "mazy". It can sometimes get so tedious that you are close to losing your mind in there... in my eyes that's what mazes are supposed to do. 90% of all video game mazes kinda suck because they lack this characteristic. If you are not in the mood for the maze-experience, just don't do it.

This, this, 100% this. As I said, it is a maze. It is supposed to be tedious, and it is supposed to drive you insane. The gameplay in general does not focus on tediousness, but the maze does because that is a property of a maze.

Currently maze's effort/reward is at least decent too not sure if it at point there players start think of it as must do, but likely close.
Soirana, it seems that the issue now is that the rewards are so good that everyone feels they have to do it, even if they hate every second of it.

Right now, the rewards are way overdone. Improved axe, PoGA, PoCC, artifact... everyone wants that. And some players might feel like they have to do it, or they'll be disadvantaged. Qui, the rewards really are not overdone. They are powerful, but that is to be expected when the maze itself is so tedious (barring magic mapping, which as you already know I believe should be done away with in the maze. Then, in my opinion, the rewards would be perfectly in line with the difficulty). Players feel like they must do it, or be disadvantaged? Against what? People who do the maze? Or the game itself? If you can complete the maze, hell, if you have done the tower, then you can probably win the game barring some really stupid mistakes (and what deaths are not caused by really stupid mistakes after the tower?). My mind is being boggled right now by the existence of people who insist that they have to do a very difficult optional area when they could just go forth and win the game.

Just gonna drop back in to say that the maze is really quite easy [assuming you are hitting it after Casino, very good assumption]. There is basically no challenge but tedium and you don't have to be the best ADOM player to be able to do it without any difficulty. Almost any stupidity in maze ['cept like leaving AMW to mark illusionary wall, which I did do once] can be solved by use of piety and optionally resurfacing.
SirTheta, I feel that the maze is rather easy as well. This is in part because I usually use the 8 scrolls of magic mapping to map one of the fake descents, and only have to walk one of them (most of the time). I never even have to re-surface at all. Piety is good enough for any HP/PP needs I face in there. That only happens while fighting the emperor, anyways, who I often melee (solely because I often play melee classes). Hell, I would even argue that the emperor needs to be buffed. My mindcrafter made short work of him by confusing him and blasting him about 6-8 times with greater mental blast.

GordonOverkill

03-03-2014, 06:28 PM

Soirana

03-03-2014, 06:46 PM

Soirana, it seems that the issue now is that the rewards are so good that everyone feels they have to do it, even if they hate every second of it.

I so wonder who has offered idea of putting extra stat potions in maze as motivation to do the maze in one of RFE... Can it be?..

JellySlayer

03-03-2014, 06:47 PM

What's more, I think that right now the Maze has the best guaranteed rewards out of any place in the game. Only lucky greater vaults or Casino might be better. And it's a mid-game place, not a late-game one, at least so indicate level restrictions.

This is a good point. There really isn't any other quest/area that gives close to as good rewards as the current maze. I'd even include greater vaults in that, since, on balance, the AoTME is better than almost any random vault artifact(s) you're likely to come across, and you're almost never going to get 5 PoGA out of a vault. Compared to the rewards of, say, the BDC, the rewards of the Maze are really off-the-charts.

Superteeth

03-03-2014, 06:57 PM

I so wonder who has offered idea of putting extra stat potions in maze as motivation to do the maze in one of RFE... Can it be?..
Well, it was suggested by him, but the final say in what is changed is made by Thomas Biskup.

grobblewobble

03-03-2014, 07:06 PM

Suggested by who? I never came up with the idea of any stat potions. TB's own idea. The artifact was suggested by Silfir.

Soirana

03-03-2014, 07:10 PM

At least we know who started so called "improvement of maze"...

grobblewobble

03-03-2014, 07:15 PM

I thought you weren't reading my posts. Glad you're still thinking of me, my lovely. xx

Stingray1

03-04-2014, 07:52 AM

The improved 'awards' is good though. From what I've read and my own experience player are actually going into the maze. Where before it was; no way I'm doing that to myself!

asdf

03-04-2014, 08:08 AM

I think there should be *at least* 10 levels in the maze rather than 7 and adequately more fake levels. This way you really ensure only very dedicated players (as in: prepared PCs) can actually tackle it. If they are not prepared, they will fail or even die - the maze is a late game area and should offer both the late game challenges and late game prizes. If you can actually conquer all the things that are against you in the maze, the prize doesn't seem to be OP at all.
Very true. Maze currently feels like 40 lvl epic dungeon with ~45 lvl epic rewards, but with level restriction 22-30.

To make it even better balanced - either increase difficulty slightly (10 levels + more fake levels + better minotaurs stats is a good idea for this amazing rewards) and allow higher level characters to enter (level 30-40?), or decrease difficulty (no fake levels, slightly lower minotaurs stats), rewards (3d15 axe, 1-2 poga, 1-2 pocc, no random artifact, +3 stats corpse) and leave it with level restriction of 20-30.

Stingray1

03-04-2014, 08:26 AM

The fake levels has to be there though, for the disappointment/discouragement factor it adds.

The maze is actually perfect as it is now, only the bug with darkness and illusionary walls.

Deathwind

03-04-2014, 09:15 PM

I see no reason the maze would need to change again and the rewards are not enough to make it required. It's only the power gamers attempting to min-max that would think of it as a required stop.

Al-Khwarizmi

03-05-2014, 12:10 PM

I like the maze in it's current implementation. I think the axe is suitable powerful for such a heavy shield-denying weapone, I think the potions are just reward for a tricky dungeon (I recently lost a character there from minotaur mage confusion, for example).
I totally agree with Blasphemous' post here, especially the part about removing features in the only areas that they are useful (This is the same reason I dislike the idea of nerfing disablers - if we can't confuse a boss, who are we ever going to throw a potion of confusion at?). Keep magic mapping in as an elegant solution to the 'tedium' problem. Keep the rewards big-ish (minor nerf to the amount of PoGAs is fine, nerf to the corpse effects is pushing it, nerf to the axe sounds ridiculous!)

Most importantly, though, I vote to not have the extra levels removed. The minotaur maze was unique, to me, when I first played it, for being the first 3d maze that I'd played in a roguelike. I don't understand why they are getting called 'fake levels'. It's like calling any dead end a 'fake corridor'! It gets really ridiculous, then, when you start asking for the removal of dead-ends in a *maze*.
This. I agree with this fully, including the "fake levels" nonsense (there is no such thing as fake levels) and the remark about disablers (clever use of items is a nice tactical feature, not a bug).

To me, magic mapping is the intended way to do the maze. I don't think it was ever intended to be done without magic mapping, which is mindbogglingly tedious. I know if magic mapping is disabled, I won't do it again. But then, why should it be disabled? I mean, if you had scrolls of magic mapping in real life, what would you save them for? For a trivial area, or for a damn maze?

Regarding balance, I think the changes have undoubtedly been positive. Before the buffing of the rewards, no one did the maze, ever, except for reasons of completionism or personal challenge. This is a clear sign of imbalance. Now, many people do it, which is great. I think no one who is not seriously obsessive will think that it's "required" though. I'll do it if I have magic mapping, and skip it if I don't. The game can perfectly be won without it, and e.g. the Pyramid is much more "required" than the maze is - its rewards have a huge impact at the point in the game where it's done and directly affect survivability, the maze's rewards (being great as they are) not so much.

About spellcasters vs. melee, the rewards are already nicely balance by the fact that they are much more useful for melee characters. The axe is not great for spellcasters (my last wizard winner slew the balors with it, but it was more for RP reasons and because it was badass than for practical reasons - I'd have been much safer using something that didn't tear my DV to shreds). The books are just random spellbooks that you can find anywhere. The corpse I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, both for RP reasons and because a caster's most powerful weapon is an acid ball with good range. And random artifacts also tend to be better for melee characters because most good random artifacts are weapons.

So I don't really think the maze needs any more changes. I enjoy it as it is now (and never did before). I wouldn't oppose a nerf of the corpse if people really thinks it's so OP, or a slight nerf to the number of PoGA's. But nerfing the axe wouldn't make sense to me, it's an awesome weapon but it already has very serious drawbacks. And disabling magic mapping is ridiculous, this is the very place where you want to use it. It's already disabled in the bottom level and that's fine.

If anything, maybe disable monster and item detection in the bottom level, so that we at least have to get bored for one level, although I don't know why people are so obsessed about making the game tedious.

SirTheta

03-05-2014, 10:18 PM

About spellcasters vs. melee, the rewards are already nicely balance by the fact that they are much more useful for melee characters. The axe is not great for spellcasters (my last wizard winner slew the balors with it, but it was more for RP reasons and because it was badass than for practical reasons - I'd have been much safer using something that didn't tear my DV to shreds). The books are just random spellbooks that you can find anywhere. The corpse I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, both for RP reasons and because a caster's most powerful weapon is an acid ball with good range. And random artifacts also tend to be better for melee characters because most good random artifacts are weapons.I want to single this out because it's simply not true - while I'm not too fond of the whole "best defense is a good offense", this is actually true when you have the cow axe. (as amply demonstrated with the 3d20+16 axe!), it's very easy to shred D:50 even on a spellcasting class. More importantly, the -8 Wi from the corpse is not a real penalty because (a) you can spend a little time training Wi with morgia (say, a reasonable timeframe on COC dive will give you +3-4 Wi from morgia) and then (b) use the POGA you just obtained to get your Wi back to equal or greater levels you had before. So it is essentially a free +9-12 To which makes a pretty big difference in HP when you are frail, a nice +11-14 St and bada bang bada boom. For the time investment (BUGWIL + Maze can be done in like 20 minutes without being frustrating at all - just have done them on a healer in rather inefficient manner), it's basically a free extra life for any spellcasting class worth its salt.

I'll probably try to respond to MM comments tomorrow.

Blasphemous

03-06-2014, 12:02 AM

SirTheta:

This is min/maxing again. I don't eat the mino emp corpse EVER. I don't eat it on casters, I don't eat it on melee chars.
In my book, this element of the game sort of falls under role-playing, which pretty much puts mino emp in the same bag with orb guardians - highly evil and highly chaotic monsters that I don't eat at, as in, I have not eaten mino emp since 1.0.0.
Because I play L+ chars 99% of the time, this means that effectively, mino emp corpse may not exist for me at all.

But: if you want to visit every location and find every item, every guaranteed artifact and eat every unique corpse, then by all means do so.
Just remember that this is not a standard for all players and adjusting the game mechanics to suit min/maxers' playstyle is just plain wrong and always will be.
As a side note I actually enjoy farming herbs and training with them. However if I had a perspective of losing 8 points in willpower and getting them all back via morgia training at a stage in the game where natural willpower exceeds 30 (which is commonly the case for my lvl 25-30 chars), I guess I'd just not do the thing that causes such a massive drop of willpower in the first place.

For all I care you can RFE mino emp corpse to grant 5d1k corruption points and 1 To and 1 St, if you think it's so OP.
Make that RFE, I will honestly upvote it because I don't care about it and if it's going to put you into a state of nirvana and oneness with your inner child, then I'd be happy to help you facilitate such a profound spiritual achievement.

But don't touch the mino axe.
Sure, wizards can run around with it and slay balors (and I do that occasionally) but does it mean it has to be nerfed because of that?
The same thing can be said about any other no.1 inventory slot item. Is there something better than bracers of war in bracers slot? No.
Does it mean BoW has to be nerfed because it's too good? Of course not.
I understand that the axe is guaranteed while BoW are not, but at the same time you can't just easily get the axe with an underpowered char while technically BoW can drop in a random jelly vault around D:20 (as was the case in one of my games) at next to no risk/effort on my part.
AMW and Ankh are also guaranteed, trivial to obtain and in many games both remain items of choice for their respective inventory slots, UNTIL the very end. How is the axe situation any different?
My opinion is that the axe itself is finally equal in power to the difficulty and tediousness of the labyrinth. If either is changed, that equilibrium is lost.

-------------------------------------------

I think we have reached a point in this discussion where both sides are pretty much stubbornly defending their points of view, thus in my view, further discussion is pointless.
Nothing you can say about mino maze and its rewards is going to convince me that a change is due.
I like it the way it is, I think it's a huge improvement over the previous setup and it should be left as such.
It doesn't take away from the game, rewards don't make the game ridiculously easy and it's optional.
There are serious consequences of using the axe and it's always a risk/gain to consider, that is virtually different for every r/c combination.
Playing with the axe requires skill and calculation. I repeat - this is a good situation which, I hope, is here to stay.

I will passionately downvote any RFE that will target the current form of the maze and the axe itself as a prize.
If you want to change the amount of PoCCs or PoGA or the corpse - be my guest, I won't stand in your way as I understand those might require *some* careful balancing.
Anything else gets my instant downvote and escalation of the RFE to all the people that I know will also downvote it.

This is my last post in this thread, I see no point in continuing this already prolonged debacle as clearly we have reached a semantic satiation without any conclusion. Have fun.

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 07:33 AM

Phew, this is a doozy, let's go through it :D

This is min/maxing again. I don't eat the mino emp corpse EVER. I don't eat it on casters, I don't eat it on melee chars.
In my book, this element of the game sort of falls under role-playing, which pretty much puts mino emp in the same bag with orb guardians - highly evil and highly chaotic monsters that I don't eat at, as in, I have not eaten mino emp since 1.0.0.
Because I play L+ chars 99% of the time, this means that effectively, mino emp corpse may not exist for me at all.Great, you roleplay. That doesn't mean anything to game balance. Maybe someone in 1.1.1 roleplayed dude who hated taste of vegetables and never ate herbs - doesn't mean herbs weren't totally broken. This is one of the worst arguments against something I've seen. RP'ing doesn't preclude balance, nor vice versa.

But: if you want to visit every location and find every item, every guaranteed artifact and eat every unique corpse, then by all means do so.
Just remember that this is not a standard for all players and adjusting the game mechanics to suit min/maxers' playstyle is just plain wrong and always will be.
As a side note I actually enjoy farming herbs and training with them. However if I had a perspective of losing 8 points in willpower and getting them all back via morgia training at a stage in the game where natural willpower exceeds 30 (which is commonly the case for my lvl 25-30 chars), I guess I'd just not do the thing that causes such a massive drop of willpower in the first place.I have no desire to visit every location and find every item - this is a situation where something in the game is broken and offers very great rewards for no risk for one set of RC and very great reward that outweighs the no risk + great tedium for other set of RC. People who used sickness/starvation training (looks at self) were min-maxing and that was fixed because it was utterly broken and gave you great unintended advantage/encouraged grinding. Also, if your Wi >30, you can get back to 26-27 Wi pretty easily and POGA the rest. Especially if you plan ahead slightly and don't down all your +stat potions before TOEF, you will easily wind up with more Wi than you had before. Of course, part of my solutions is to lessen Wi hit from corpse, but any argument about eating corpse because of Wi hit is simply wrong from the get-go for 95% of cases.

For all I care you can RFE mino emp corpse to grant 5d1k corruption points and 1 To and 1 St, if you think it's so OP.
Make that RFE, I will honestly upvote it because I don't care about it and if it's going to put you into a state of nirvana and oneness with your inner child, then I'd be happy to help you facilitate such a profound spiritual achievement.Come now, I just want corpse to be more in line with what is already in game. If you don't think +6 St/To for ~1 corruption is stupidly overpowered, I can't help you. It's clear as day. Mino Maze is considerably less dangerous, than, say, Earth Temple if you have the right prep [which isn't hard to find].

But don't touch the mino axe.
Sure, wizards can run around with it and slay balors (and I do that occasionally) but does it mean it has to be nerfed because of that?
The same thing can be said about any other no.1 inventory slot item. Is there something better than bracers of war in bracers slot? No.
Does it mean BoW has to be nerfed because it's too good? Of course not.
I understand that the axe is guaranteed while BoW are not, but at the same time you can't just easily get the axe with an underpowered char while technically BoW can drop in a random jelly vault around D:20 (as was the case in one of my games) at next to no risk/effort on my part.
AMW and Ankh are also guaranteed, trivial to obtain and in many games both remain items of choice for their respective inventory slots, UNTIL the very end. How is the axe situation any different?
My opinion is that the axe itself is finally equal in power to the difficulty and tediousness of the labyrinth. If either is changed, that equilibrium is lost.Well your are wrong and that's why my solution isn't "put mino axe back the way it was" and is "make a bunch of changes to make the maze less dumb and also put the mino axe back the way it was". Spellcasters could use cow axe in 1.1.1 just fine at 3d20+16 - it was an amazing weapon and the loss of DV was totally worth it because the cow axe was very good [again, just see the GE Priest I linked]. (and if you don't like that loss of DV, well, don't use it - that won't change fact it is amazing weapon). In 1.2.0, a 3d20+16 cow axe is better than 1.1.1 already due to various changes/fixes introduced in the new versions - for example, combined with cat ring + FW, you can get critical like 50-60% of the time. Changes to backstabbing and 2H weapon bonus also greatly increase the power of 2H weapons like cow axe. 4d20+16 is just mindblowingly overpowered - your average damage on berserk (or even very aggressive) is around/over 100 in majority of cases. So, I think it's pretty obvious the cow axe is way overpowered - and, I stress, it would still be SUPERB at 3d20+16 (I would definitely still use it in most cases). The fact that it was neglected a lot in 1.1.1 is not because it wasn't a good weapon because it was one of the best weapons in the game in 1.1.1. Your opposition to this point, of all things, is baffling to me - I was pretty sure it would be one of the least controversial.

I think the problem here is that you've completely misunderstood the fundamental problem with the new cow axe - yes, it completely outclasses every other piece of weapon by an asston, but that's just my simplification of the situation and isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself (after all, Executor outclasses most/all 1H weapons). Rather, it's that the damage itself is completely nutso insane high - which is why it's the best weapon in the game - and it takes all of fifteen minutes to get it for some RCs. Of course, most importantly, it's guaranteed. In addition, you don't see just how good the old cow axe was - and how it is already better in 1.2.0 without adding a die.

[This is kind of off-topic, but: some may wear the AMW for convenience, including myself sometimes, but it is emphatically NOT the best equipment for its slot unless you are (a) fighting ogre magus in or out of arena, (b) crowning, (c) on cat lord level, (d) fighting Nuurgy, (e) trying to obey monk armor restrictions and lack a good elven chain mail, e.g. from BUGWIL. For most of the game, it is quite poor armor and I gladly take any adamantium or eternium armor or over it - and some mithril pieces too - outside of the above rather specific situations. Let's not even touch on bracers of war, which I have gotten once on any of my winners as compared to AOTME on 7 of my winners. There's an enormous difference between guaranteed and non-guaranteed.]

I think we have reached a point in this discussion where both sides are pretty much stubbornly defending their points of view, thus in my view, further discussion is pointless.
Nothing you can say about mino maze and its rewards is going to convince me that a change is due.
I like it the way it is, I think it's a huge improvement over the previous setup and it should be left as such.
It doesn't take away from the game, rewards don't make the game ridiculously easy and it's optional.
There are serious consequences of using the axe and it's always a risk/gain to consider, that is virtually different for every r/c combination.
Playing with the axe requires skill and calculation. I repeat - this is a good situation which, I hope, is here to stay.You're entitled to think what you like, obviously, but - to be blunt - you are wrong. While the rewards a huge improvement over the previous setup, they're both vastly overpowered and far too easy to get for certain RCs.

I will passionately downvote any RFE that will target the current form of the maze and the axe itself as a prize.
If you want to change the amount of PoCCs or PoGA or the corpse - be my guest, I won't stand in your way as I understand those might require *some* careful balancing.
Anything else gets my instant downvote and escalation of the RFE to all the people that I know will also downvote it.lol, okay? I'm not even sure what that last sentence means, but as I said in first post I'm not submitting this as an RFE because I have little reason to believe anything will change based on TB's comments in original RFE [and I expected some responses akin to this].

This is my last post in this thread, I see no point in continuing this already prolonged debacle as clearly we have reached a semantic satiation without any conclusion. Have fun.That's okay. I've thought a lot about maze and I know I am correct in my identification of the major problems and that the thrust of my solutions is also correct :) [though the specifics are obviously debatable].

By the way, in case anyone is curious, here's the kill log from my most recent maze go (mist elf healer):

1 minotaur emperor
2 minotaur lords
2 minotaur mages
1 minotaur mazelord
3 minotaur mazemasters
I took me about 10 minutes total with TP + magic map, and I got stat drained zero times. I got +6 To/St from the corpse, went from 22->14 Wi (trained back up by the time I hit Mana Temple), 6 POGA (drank all), plus the potion of strength, for a nice +12 To, +14 St, +6 Wi [on a mist elf]. I used cow axe for rest of game. So, yes, I am beyond confident that the maze is utterly broken.

GordonOverkill

03-06-2014, 08:33 AM

Great, you roleplay. That doesn't mean anything to game balance. Maybe someone in 1.1.1 roleplayed dude who hated taste of vegetables and never ate herbs - doesn't mean herbs weren't totally broken. This is one of the worst arguments against something I've seen. RP'ing doesn't preclude balance, nor vice versa.

Well, on this point you are absolutely wrong. Roleplaying and minmaxing are absolutely equivalent ways to play the game and both are to be taken into consideration. If a change sucks in regards to RP (like disabling magic mapping in the maze... or making it straight forward and quickly crossable without such a spell), it's just natural that us roleplayers complain about it.
By the way, in my eyes one of the biggest advantages that ADOM has above all other simmilar games I know is it's atmosphere. When I play it, it feels to me like a real adventure and not just like diving into some rediculously complicated dungeon that an insane architect has created as a challange for power gamers.
So I repeat myself: From a roleplayer's perspective the maze plays perfectly well and all the suggested changes of the power gaming faction would rather make it worse. (But like I said, I don't care if the rewards get nerfed... actually I don't see any good reason why the Mino Emperor hides a sixpack of PoGAs down there.)

Deathwind

03-06-2014, 09:34 AM

I might be wrong but the way I see it clearing the maze requires you to:
-explore the maze the old fashion way, if so you've earned what you get
-clear the bug temple for the scrolls, as such you more than likely won't need the rewards anyway
-grind until you get enough magic mapping, if someone is willing to grind you won't be able to stop them
-get lucky, this IS a rogue-like...

This will likely make me sound like I'm terrible at the game but I've yet to come close to clearing the bug temple and I know I can't be the only one. Clearing it is almost required to break the maze as magic mapping isn't all that common outside of there. Not everyone who plays this game is an expert.

I agree that the rewards could use a bit of adjustment what you propose is overkill. Just because you min-max doesn't mean everything should be adjusted to those standards.

This might be a stupid idea but shouldn't teleport control fail here if it's going to fail anywhere? A maze of near identical corridors and full of illusions, wouldn't it be hard to focus on a specific part of it?

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 02:25 PM

Well, on this point you are absolutely wrong. Roleplaying and minmaxing are absolutely equivalent ways to play the game and both are to be taken into consideration. If a change sucks in regards to RP (like disabling magic mapping in the maze... or making it straight forward and quickly crossable without such a spell), it's just natural that us roleplayers complain about it.
By the way, in my eyes one of the biggest advantages that ADOM has above all other simmilar games I know is it's atmosphere. When I play it, it feels to me like a real adventure and not just like diving into some rediculously complicated dungeon that an insane architect has created as a challange for power gamers.
So I repeat myself: From a roleplayer's perspective the maze plays perfectly well and all the suggested changes of the power gaming faction would rather make it worse. (But like I said, I don't care if the rewards get nerfed... actually I don't see any good reason why the Mino Emperor hides a sixpack of PoGAs down there.)I'm not saying roleplaying isn't a central part of ADOM that you shouldn't take into consideration. However, if you actually read his post, his argument is that it doesn't matter what stats the corpse gives because he roleplays and doesn't eat chaos corpses. Essentially, the corpse could give +50 St/To with no drawback and it would be totally fine in his view because he doesn't eat it, so it isn't broken. That's obviously a flawed argument - just because you don't do something for RP reasons doesn't mean it shouldn't be balanced. If you truly read my post, I note that RPing does not preclude game balance and game balance does not preclude RPing. They coexist very easily.

Also, all my suggestions would make the maze way better from an RP perspective, as well. What kind of dumb ass minotaur creates a maze that you can magic map + teleport your way out of? C'mon dude, that's not even a maze! I have no idea why you think that would ruin it from an RP perspective, like seriously. This is why my suggestions for balancing the maze are multi-part and in line with making it, you know, a real maze for everyone instead of a location you visit and magic map + TP to downstairs for any smart character, and get stuck in for an hour for the unlucky ones.

Once you get some magic map, mino maze is as broken for stats as herbs ever where.

I might be wrong but the way I see it clearing the maze requires you to:
-explore the maze the old fashion way, if so you've earned what you get
-clear the bug temple for the scrolls, as such you more than likely won't need the rewards anyway
-grind until you get enough magic mapping, if someone is willing to grind you won't be able to stop them
-get lucky, this IS a rogue-like...

This will likely make me sound like I'm terrible at the game but I've yet to come close to clearing the bug temple and I know I can't be the only one. Clearing it is almost required to break the maze as magic mapping isn't all that common outside of there. Not everyone who plays this game is an expert.

I agree that the rewards could use a bit of adjustment what you propose is overkill. Just because you min-max doesn't mean everything should be adjusted to those standards.

This might be a stupid idea but shouldn't teleport control fail here if it's going to fail anywhere? A maze of near identical corridors and full of illusions, wouldn't it be hard to focus on a specific part of it?Magic Map spellbook is not uncommon and quite useful. Bug Temple can theoretically be cleared with very well charged fireball wand, but it's a bit tedious to scum up the booze required to clear, so I usually skip. However, BUGWIL becomes ridiculously easily once you have any castable ball spell, which is not too hard to find on any class that finds books a lot; combine that with \Fireballs and voila.

JellySlayer

03-06-2014, 02:33 PM

BugWil can also be cleared with a Banshee wish without too much trouble.

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 02:34 PM

Hunh, really? I thought that was fixed many prereleases ago?!

edit: it appears this was not fixed! Awesome :D That's a hard way to do it though, does require a wish.

GordonOverkill

03-06-2014, 02:35 PM

Also, all my suggestions would make the maze way better from an RP perspective, as well. What kind of dumb ass minotaur creates a maze that you can magic map + teleport your way out of? C'mon dude, that's not even a maze! I have no idea why you think that would ruin it from an RP perspective, like seriously. This is why my suggestions for balancing the maze are multi-part and in line with making it, you know, a real maze for everyone instead of a location you visit and magic map + TP to downstairs for any smart character, and get stuck in for an hour for the unlucky ones.

What dumbass wizard would create a magic mapping spell that doesn't work inside a maze? The maze is the prototype area of aplication of this particular spell. If it doesn't work there, rather remove the whole spell from the game.
And just by the way, I'm afraid you are wrong about the function of the maze itself. It is there to keep the minotaur inside, not to prevent heroes from getting in. That's why I am heaviely against spellbooks of magic mapping or teleportation as reward by the way ;-)

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 02:46 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing to suggest that the Mino Maze in any way corresponds to the Labyrinth of GR mythology [aside from the minotaurs in the maze bit, which is a common trope due to the Labyrinth]. I always felt it as suggested by monster descriptions and names that minotaurs were heavily involved in creation of maze. It doesn't really matter either way though. While I agree that magic map's perfect application is the mino maze - and it's kind of terrible to lose it - the fact remains that magic map completely breaks the maze. This is simply something you can't get around: the rewards are way out of line for the time investment you have to put in when using magic map (seriously, just look at the stats I posted from my mist elf healer).

In any case your logic doesn't quite hold up - what kind of wizard creates a teleport spell that doesn't work on chaos temples? Is cat lord more powerful than wizard, since you can't TP on this level either? What kind of wizard creates a spell that can't dig through all walls [think MT]? There are many places in ADOM that stop you from using some sort of spell or item that would make it completely trivial/far too easy to circumvent a challenge. I don't see why you think Maze has to be some huge exception.

_Ln_

03-06-2014, 02:48 PM

Keep Magic Map, but remove teleportation and swap teleport traps with ceiling ones and there you have a nice Maze which will require you to leave equipment behind and face consequences or take it with you and lose a portion of it.

And get corpse back to 1.1.1 and slightly increase corruption (200d10 -> 300d10) to bring in line with orb guardians.

Everybody happy, right?

EDIT: Indeed, I've pondered the problem at hand and believe that teleportation is the main breaking factor of the Maze. What are the innate dangers in the Maze:
- corruption
- starvation
- traps
- actual minotaurs
- Maze-like architecture that is designed in such a way as to stop you from going from location A to location B even if you see location B

Teleportation just about trumps all of these. Thus, it is the root of all evil and must be purged.

JellySlayer

03-06-2014, 02:50 PM

I think you mean 300d10, as 3000d10 would, on average, just about kill you :p

Keep Magic Map, but remove teleportation and swap teleport traps with ceiling ones and there you have a nice Maze which will require you to leave equipment behind and face consequences or take it with you and lose a portion of it.

This seems like a good idea to me.

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 02:56 PM

Ln: that could also work, though I still think it makes the maze trivial. Actual travel time + traps is not much consideration, the #1 thing that makes the maze a challenge is simply finding stairs when you lack MM [in my experience]. When you take this away, the maze becomes pretty easy no matter what because obviously traps are less of a problem when you don't have to wrongly traverse much of the maze, no food problems, less encountering of dangerous monsters, etc.. What I was actually thinking was amending magic map to work on ML1-3 and then no magic map once illusionary walls are introduced on ML4 [seems like a natural cut-off]. This could also be place where TP gets banned until Mino Emp [or maybe Mino Mages surrounding Mino Emp] are killed. Thematic that the closer you get to Emp, the more things go haywire.

edit: I disagree with your analysis of why TP is broken, Ln (having done the maze a few times w/ TPitis and no MM). Teleportation only becomes a problem once you can see the whole map or have explored to a downstairs - without it, teleportation is not very useful. Without magic map, teleportation is nothing, and magic map circumvents all the above things as well :)

grobblewobble

03-06-2014, 03:00 PM

Bug Temple can theoretically be cleared with very well charged fireball wand, but it's a bit tedious to scum up the booze required to clear, so I usually skip.
A melee character of level 20-something can do the bug temple, you don't need to be able to cast ball spells. Burning a wish only makes sense if you want to clear it really early (like level 12 or something).

Kill gcb's in melee, use offensive wands against the killer bugs on the surface, wand of fireballs to clear the entry room. Use doors to block off the killer bugs downstairs. Then you only need to fight the killer bugs in the final room. Here again, use a combination of offensive wands / melee. Melee is okay as long as you have good DV (PV is of course useless), you don't fight more than 1 killer bug at once and have a good source of healing (like the water orb). You do not need excessive amounts of booze.

_Ln_

03-06-2014, 03:02 PM

Ln: that could also work, though I still think it makes the maze trivial. Actual travel time + traps is not much consideration, the #1 thing that makes the maze a challenge is simply finding stairs when you lack MM [in my experience]. When you take this away, the maze becomes pretty easy no matter what because obviously traps are less of a problem when you don't have to wrongly traverse much of the maze, no food problems, less encountering of dangerous monsters, etc.. What I was actually thinking was amending magic map to work on ML1-3 and then no magic map once illusionary walls are introduced on ML4 [seems like a natural cut-off]. This could also be place where TP gets banned until Mino Emp [or maybe Mino Mages surrounding Mino Emp] are killed. Thematic that the closer you get to Emp, the more things go haywire.

Personally I found Magic Map absolutely fine. If you have found a spellbook - you're in luck. And even 8 scrolls don't guarantee you to get to the bottom (believe me).

You must be seriously underestimating ceiling traps. Try leaving the Mana Temple without source of light and you'll see. Also try to do the Maze without Alertness and you'll get fucked up by traps big time.

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 03:05 PM

Personally I found Magic Map absolutely fine. If you have found a spellbook - you're in luck. And even 8 scrolls don't guarantee you to get to the bottom (believe me).

You must be seriously underestimating ceiling traps. Try leaving the Mana Temple without source of light and you'll see. Also try to do the Maze without Alertness and you'll get fucked up by traps big time.I am well aware of dangerousness of both ceiling traps [I have left MT w/o light before and almost died] and how good Alertness is. (Sixth Sense talent gives 1/6 chance to evade traps, btw, and everyone can get this. It's a pretty good talent considering that is chance you get at Alertness of 100). I have also done maze without either before [only recently found out about how good Sixth Sense is!]. Please see above edit for why I think it is magic map, not TP that is broken ;)

Btw, do not worry about me discussing this "calmly" with people who wish to seriously engage with the ideas presented, I am capable of doing so despite what my other posts imply :D

_Ln_

03-06-2014, 03:06 PM

A melee character of level 20-something can do the bug temple, you don't need to be able to cast ball spells. Burning a wish only makes sense if you want to clear it really early (like level 12 or something).

Kill gcb's in melee, use offensive wands against the killer bugs on the surface, wand of fireballs to clear the entry room. Use doors to block off the killer bugs downstairs. Then you only need to fight the killer bugs in the final room. Here again, use a combination of offensive wands / melee. Melee is okay as long as you have good DV (PV is of course useless), you don't fight more than 1 killer bug at once and have a good source of healing (like the water orb). You do not need excessive amounts of booze.

That is most certainly not true for an "average level 20-something" melee char.

P.S. Double post yay!

grobblewobble

03-06-2014, 03:07 PM

That is most certainly not true for an "average level 20-something" melee char.
It is true. I've done it a few times now. Give me an average level 24 melee character and I will show you. :p

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 03:12 PM

That is most certainly not true for an "average level 20-something" melee char.

P.S. Double post yay!your double post: FOILED! haha.

FWIW, if you have enough offensive wands, I'm sure Bug Temple is possible, but with introduction of shrugging, I have had rather tough time killing killer bugs with bolt wands.

_Ln_

03-06-2014, 03:14 PM

edit: I disagree with your analysis of why TP is broken, Ln (having done the maze a few times w/ TPitis and no MM). Teleportation only becomes a problem once you can see the whole map or have explored to a downstairs - without it, teleportation is not very useful. Without magic map, teleportation is nothing, and magic map circumvents all the above things as well :)

Well I disagree with the statement about magic map circumventing all of these things. Scrolls are limited and the spell can actually use a debuff (either PP cost increase or decrease initial coverage and actually scale it with spell level).
If you find out that stairs are on the other side of the level, you'll have to plow through all traps and minotaurs while burning food and getting corrupted (from traps too!). Trigger a corruption trap around 7-8 times during traversing one level - there goes one of PoCC.

Good luck finding illusionary walls when your MM reveals that there is no direct path from 1 staircase to another.

For comparison - you need 1 casting of TP to get from point A to point B. If you are unlucky, you'll need 10 or more castings of MM to reveal the staircase.

_Ln_

03-06-2014, 03:17 PM

It is true. I've done it a few times now. Give me an average level 24 melee character and I will show you. :p

I have a feeling that you'll soon get the opportunity to test this in ADOMPossible.

I said double post yay!

P.S. yay! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLTZctTG6cE)

JellySlayer

03-06-2014, 03:18 PM

I have a feeling that you'll soon get the opportunity to test this in ADOMPossible.

Hmm....

Not a bad idea ;)

GordonOverkill

03-06-2014, 03:19 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing to suggest that the Mino Maze in any way corresponds to the Labyrinth of GR mythology [aside from the minotaurs in the maze bit, which is a common trope due to the Labyrinth]. I always felt it as suggested by monster descriptions and names that minotaurs were heavily involved in creation of maze.

Well, that's possible. I have to confess that I never read the minotaurs descriptions, so my position might be rather weak ;-)

the rewards are way out of line for the time investment you have to put in when using magic map (seriously, just look at the stats I posted from my mist elf healer).

Just by the way, the same spell gives you a muuuuuuch more overpowered reward at even less time investment earlier in the game: The wand of teleportation. If I had to choose between the cow axe and the wand, I would take the wand in 9 out of 10 cases.

In any case your logic doesn't quite hold up - what kind of wizard creates a teleport spell that doesn't work on chaos temples? Is cat lord more powerful than wizard, since you can't TP on this level either? What kind of wizard creates a spell that can't dig through all walls [think MT]? There are many places in ADOM that stop you from using some sort of spell or item that would make it completely trivial/far too easy to circumvent a challenge. I don't see why you think Maze has to be some huge exception.

The problem is - from a roleplaying point of view - that the maze is the one location for which this spell was invented. If it doesn't work there, you just don't need it at all.

I kind of like _Ln_'s solution though.

JellySlayer

03-06-2014, 03:28 PM

Just by the way, the same spell gives you a muuuuuuch more overpowered reward at even less time investment earlier in the game: The wand of teleportation. If I had to choose between the cow axe and the wand, I would take the wand in 9 out of 10 cases.

You'd take the wand of teleport over the best (almost) weapon in the game, 4-5 PoGA, +6 St/To, and a random artifact?

I mean, don't get me wrong, teleport is extremely useful, but that's just crazy talk. I'd happily play the entire game without ever using teleport in exchange for those rewards.

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 03:36 PM

Well I disagree with the statement about magic map circumventing all of these things. Scrolls are limited and the spell can actually use a debuff (either PP cost increase or decrease initial coverage and actually scale it with spell level).
If you find out that stairs are on the other side of the level, you'll have to plow through all traps and minotaurs while burning food and getting corrupted (from traps too!). Trigger a corruption trap around 7-8 times during traversing one level - there goes one of PoCC.

Good luck finding illusionary walls when your MM reveals that there is no direct path from 1 staircase to another.

For comparison - you need 1 casting of TP to get from point A to point B. If you are unlucky, you'll need 10 or more castings of MM to reveal the staircase.Yeah, but you are operating under the assumption that the way is revealed for TP. If you disable magic map, it would take a LOT more than 10 castings of TP to find staircases - TP would be functionally useless outside of making way back to surface [whether having completed maze or needing to get items], which I think is good use for TP. The only way TP is any use in maze is if stairs have been revealed, or you've like explored 90% of level but forgot one corner that is now in opposite place of level as you are - I think we all agree that actually exploring to find stairs presents many risks, so if TP is useful after having cleared way, all it does is stop you from having to retraverse path on foot, which reduces tedium/is nice, but not exactly the best thing since sliced bread. Rather, the problem with TP is that you can reveal whole level with magic map.

Without TP, magic map also has the knock on effect of: letting you avoid most traps, since you can see clear path to stairs [small sidenote: I find that illusionary walls are easy to find once place has been MM'd or explored. Find dividing wall and bump into it at various places], reducing starvation risk because you know most efficient path to stairs, circumventing most monsters because you can see clear path to stairs, etc. So, I believe MM is the root of the problems in maze - including problems with TP. [btw I'm on board with MM costing less PP considering how inefficient it is].

Sure, 8 isn't always enough MM scrolls, but you'll usually find 1-2 in course of game up to that point that you haven't used and that will reliably deposit you on real ML7 or get you through one or both of false ML6s.

GordonOverkill

03-06-2014, 03:40 PM

You'd take the wand of teleport over the best (almost) weapon in the game, 4-5 PoGA, +6 St/To, and a random artifact?

I mean, don't get me wrong, teleport is extremely useful, but that's just crazy talk. I'd happily play the entire game without ever using teleport in exchange for those rewards.

Definitely. It greatly increases my chances during the most dangerous part of the game. If I am still alive at the point where I am allowed to enter the maze, I am already a powerhouse with good chances to finish the game, so the actual impact of these rewards is rather small (compared to the wand).

_Ln_

03-06-2014, 03:59 PM

Yeah, but you are operating under the assumption that the way is revealed for TP. If you disable magic map, it would take a LOT more than 10 castings of TP to find staircases - TP would be functionally useless outside of making way back to surface [whether having completed maze or needing to get items], which I think is good use for TP. The only way TP is any use in maze is if stairs have been revealed, or you've like explored 90% of level but forgot one corner that is now in opposite place of level as you are - I think we all agree that actually exploring to find stairs presents many risks, so if TP is useful after having cleared way, all it does is stop you from having to retraverse path on foot, which reduces tedium/is nice, but not exactly the best thing since sliced bread. Rather, the problem with TP is that you can reveal whole level with magic map.

Without TP, magic map also has the knock on effect of: letting you avoid most traps, since you can see clear path to stairs [small sidenote: I find that illusionary walls are easy to find once place has been MM'd or explored. Find dividing wall and bump into it at various places], reducing starvation risk because you know most efficient path to stairs, circumventing most monsters because you can see clear path to stairs, etc. So, I believe MM is the root of the problems in maze - including problems with TP. [btw I'm on board with MM costing less PP considering how inefficient it is].

Sure, 8 isn't always enough MM scrolls, but you'll usually find 1-2 in course of game up to that point that you haven't used and that will reliably deposit you on real ML7 or get you through one or both of false ML6s.

Actually I meant that Magic Map is currently too powerful. I also dislike that it doesn't seem to scale at all. If I were to create and RFE, I'd make it reveal a circular area around the PC (much like ball spell) which radius is based on spell level and the usual Willpower.

From my experience, when I have teleportitis (read pretty much every game) and don't have magic map, I explore parts of Maze levels and w5 to get to the other side instead of going there manually. I agree that removing Magic Map will undermine teleport power but I see teleport as more powerful tool against everything Maze has to provide than Magic Map.

For what it's worth, consider the following.
Suppose there is no teleport in the Maze, but Magic Map remains. This way (if you have the right resources) you can identify the location of staircases. You will have to get there, but tedium is largely removed whereas traps and minotaurs are still there and present a certain degree of danger.
Suppose there is no Magic Map, but teleport is there. Tedium still runs rampant because you have to explore all this crap in search of that one tile you've skipped right near the up staircase. Then you'll hit fake levels and everything is much worse tenfold.

With scrolls of magic map (conserved till the end) you can avoid most fake levels, but guess what - you've used a limited resource which is designed to help the PC navigate in unknown territories. Shouldn't you be rewarded both from minmaxing and RP standpoints?

Anyway, it seems like this is a clash of individual preferences and I'm just throwing some ideas. I've been avoiding this thread so far, but I do believe that the Maze needs some nerfing in one way or another.

Definitely. It greatly increases my chances during the most dangerous part of the game. If I am still alive at the point where I am allowed to enter the maze, I am already a powerhouse with good chances to finish the game, so the actual impact of these rewards is rather small (compared to the wand).

While Gordon is definitely crazy (just teasing :D) I did die recently with a char slaughtered by a bunch of quickling kings on a CoC cavernous level because I lacked any source of teleportation (except teleportitis, but RNG was a bitch). However the amount of situations where teleport wand (a non-artifact item) is better than +5 to all stats and +6St/To on top of it as well as second best weapon in game and extra corruption removal is close to non-existent (read, quickling kings in the middle of cavernous levels)

Superteeth

03-06-2014, 04:02 PM

The problem is - from a roleplaying point of view - that the maze is the one location for which this spell was invented. If it doesn't work there, you just don't need it at all.

The game description heavily suggests that the minotaurs created the maze. I am not entirely sure what you mean by "a roleplaying point of view". I am reading it as an appeal to realism, but correct me if I am wrong. If that is what you mean, it makes just as much sense to think that magic mapping would NOT work in a maze created by the mazemasters themselves. I mean, come on, the maze is their home field.

I have said this before, but magic mapping is disabled on the last floor. This makes it clear that the mages of the maze were able to prevent even the mighty wizards from magically mapping their maze, knowing that allowing this would make their maze utterly useless. There is nothing wrong with an appeal to realism-type fix that would entirely disable magic mapping to bring the rewards in line with the maze's difficulty (or tedium, if you so prefer to call it, to which I will always reply "It's a freakin' maze!").

If, as you say, the maze is the only place where one would even want to use magic mapping, and disabling it there would make it entirely useless or unnecessary, then so what? Disarm traps is more or less useless, as are create item, neutralize poison, know alignment, scare monster, and a couple others (your mileage may vary with these spells, but don't argue that they are commonly used, because that is simply not true). Even if this was the case, magic mapping has plenty of other applications (the cat lord level, speed runs, and for when you just need to get to the stairs down because you are too lazy to walk, which is what I use it for).

_Ln_

03-06-2014, 04:10 PM

I have said this before, but magic mapping is disabled on the last floor. This makes it clear that the mages of the maze were able to prevent even the mighty wizards from magically mapping their maze, knowing that allowing this would make their maze utterly useless.

Magic Map on the last level is freaking useless from any point of view compared to all other Maze levels, so minotaurs are outright retarded.

grobblewobble

03-06-2014, 04:13 PM

Suppose there is no Magic Map, but teleport is there. Tedium still runs rampant because you have to explore all this crap in search of that one tile you've skipped right near the up staircase. Then you'll hit fake levels and everything is much worse tenfold.

With scrolls of magic map (conserved till the end) you can avoid most fake levels, but guess what - you've used a limited resource which is designed to help the PC navigate in unknown territories. Shouldn't you be rewarded both from minmaxing and RP standpoints?
Strongly agree with this. I get that the rewards of the mino maze are currently OP and need a nerf, but I really don't understand why one would want to prohibit MM in the one place where it's actually useful. Especially if the complaint is that the maze is too tedious / boring. This would only make it worse.

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 04:20 PM

Actually I meant that Magic Map is currently too powerful. I also dislike that it doesn't seem to scale at all. If I were to create and RFE, I'd make it reveal a circular area around the PC (much like ball spell) which radius is based on spell level and the usual Willpower.Haha, wow did I misinterpret that.

For what it's worth, consider the following.
Suppose there is no teleport in the Maze, but Magic Map remains. This way (if you have the right resources) you can identify the location of staircases. You will have to get there, but tedium is largely removed whereas traps and minotaurs are still there and present a certain degree of danger.
Suppose there is no Magic Map, but teleport is there. Tedium still runs rampant because you have to explore all this crap in search of that one tile you've skipped right near the up staircase. Then you'll hit fake levels and everything is much worse tenfold.

With scrolls of magic map (conserved till the end) you can avoid most fake levels, but guess what - you've used a limited resource which is designed to help the PC navigate in unknown territories. Shouldn't you be rewarded both from minmaxing and RP standpoints?Well, this is why part of my RFE is to remove false levels, but I do agree strongly with your analysis. The problem, as I see it, is that magic map creates a very strong dichotomy: if you have it, the maze becomes a cakewalk - even if you have to walk to the stairs. Thus, all rewards are overpowered compared to the effort required to get them. If you don't have magic map, the maze is tedious, but the rewards at least would outweigh the tedium if false levels were removed. OTOH, everyone has easy access to TP, so it's a more level playing field, and TP by itself does not make the maze a cakewalk - so I'm not really sure what ideal solution is [since I obviously hate tedium of maze].

Anyway, it seems like this is a clash of individual preferences and I'm just throwing some ideas. I've been avoiding this thread so far, but I do believe that the Maze needs some nerfing in one way or another.Well I created thread so we can have frank discussion :) If you have different preference/opinion than mine [as long as they, you know, make sense and you're taking this seriously] that's great because it creates new ideas that can be applied. I don't claim to be total arbiter of what correct solution has to look like ;) [Well, not totally true as I think false levels need to be removed or made obvious no matter what, but I see this as like figment of my imagination in terms of getting it implemented :(].

Superteeth

03-06-2014, 04:23 PM

Strongly agree with this. I get that the rewards of the mino maze are currently OP and need a nerf, but I really don't understand why one would want to prohibit MM in the one place where it's actually useful. Especially if the complaint is that the maze is too tedious / boring. This would only make it worse.

Because it's a maze. If magic mapping can be used in a maze (which is supposed to be time-consuming to navigate), Thomas Biskup should just change the flavor text of minotaurs, change the maze into a regular dungeon, and call it MD (for "Minotaur Dungeon").

_Ln_, I realize that it is stupid that magic mapping is disabled on the last level, but Biskup did it for a reason. Now if he applied that to all the levels, it would actually make sense that it is disabled on the last level.

Deathwind

03-06-2014, 07:49 PM

This comes down to "if you have the right stuff it's easy, if not it's a pain", isn't this the case for most side quests?

Stingray1

03-06-2014, 08:19 PM

Isn't that the case for more than side quests?

SirTheta

03-06-2014, 08:40 PM

Yes and no. There's plenty of situations where "if you have the right stuff it's easy, if not it's a pain" - example, TOTHK though that's more "impossible" to "easy" and you can scum up an ogre magus with enough patience. Or better yet - VDDL, you can either item detect/MM it or dig out the level cleverly. But in no other situation is the reward for the "easy" part so immense compared to how easy it is (imo).

gym21

03-06-2014, 11:17 PM

I'm a melee-first kind of guy, and I think the mino maze is perfectly balanced for melee characters. It's frustrating, but gives you a sense of accomplishment when it's complete, and that's really important in a game. That said, I would suspect it's massively unbalanced for casters.

The solution for me isn't changing the maze experience for melee chars, which I feel is perfect -- enough rewards to push you there but enough frustration that sometimes you give up -- it's to make it less trivial for the wizards et. al. I'm not smart enough to figure out the solution, but the rest of you are.

aerol

03-07-2014, 06:23 PM

I agree with a few things and have an idea that hasn't been mentioned.

- The axe should go back to previous damage numbers. It was already amazing to begin with (highest damage two hander in the game) and two handed weapons have already been boosted with the 50% extra damage bonus from St in recent versions, so it's already better than it was before without the extra die.
- I absolutely agree with the idea of making the fake levels somehow apparent even to an unspoiled player without having to explore the entire level; gut's idea of them containing only corruption traps is great.
- An idea not previously mentioned: disabling teleportation (or teleport control) on the final level. This would make the boss fight more exciting and thematic.

As for the idea of somehow reducing the amount of PoGA, I'm totally indifferent and wouldn't mind either way. If I do the maze, it's for bragging rights and for trying out the axe, not for the other rewards. On the other hand, I don't agree with removing magic map (scroll or spell) or teleportation on the whole maze - sure, it's easier for spellcasters to deal with navigating it the way it is now, but then again the rewards are less beneficial to spellcasters. It balances out and the maze is a sidequest more about bragging rights than about anything else. When we see "did the maze" in a YAVP, we give more nerd points if you did it with a non spellcaster as it is, and extra points if you did it without a big cache of scrolls. This doesn't really need to be balanced in terms of relative difficulty regarding the character's class. The rest of the game isn't balanced this way and this is a good design choice - everybody knows wizards are easier to play than farmers.

SirTheta

03-07-2014, 10:05 PM

aerol: I'm not really sure if disabling TP on just last level will have much effect. It's actually more area where you don't need TP since you're prepped to the teeth for tough fight (making it not very tough) and you don't need to TP between stairs and stuff.

I don't think rewards are that much less beneficial for spellcasters for the reasons I've laid out, and I also don't think jump in maze difficulty for MM [i.e. spellcasting + other classes] vs. non-MM [mostly melee] is not really comparable to other areas of game. Like, sure, wizards, etc. have easier time overall and basically have little challenge for most of game; however, when you look at mino maze, magic map means: practically no to extremely little item destruction, a lot less corruption [toned down in p21, may be less problem], way less tedium [one of biggest things, here, spending 5-10 minutes reading scrolls/TPing/travelling vs 45 minutes to 1 hour of frustrated hopping around is huge difference], zero chance ever of stat drains [unless you are quite foolish indeed!], etc. The difference in easiness w/ and w/o MM is just orders of magnitude different for your normal "oh wizard is easier than melee everywhere". I'd be very hard pressed to come up with analogous in-game situation to maze in terms of difficulty difference.

aerol

03-08-2014, 12:18 AM

Al-Khwarizmi

03-08-2014, 08:22 AM

- I absolutely agree with the idea of making the fake levels somehow apparent even to an unspoiled player without having to explore the entire level; gut's idea of them containing only corruption traps is great.
Honestly, there is no such thing as fake levels. That's Guidebook superstition. In my last maze run there were several possible paths of levels that lead to the bottom (and of course, also some levels with no downstairs).

It's just a network of interconnected levels.

SirTheta

03-08-2014, 12:09 PM

By the way, I totally stand behind your other idea of making it so that orb guardian corpses always increase stats regardless of their current values or potentials, like the minotaur emperor - and I would add Keriax to the list. An RFE to that effect would definitely get my vote.According to Ln, this is the case. Problem is that they give pitiful stat increases (or increases to stats I don't care about) for a lot of corruption. Even if I'm rolling with Khelly and mystic scrolls, the tradeoff is not really worth it.

Honestly, there is no such thing as fake levels. That's Guidebook superstition. In my last maze run there were several possible paths of levels that lead to the bottom (and of course, also some levels with no downstairs).

It's just a network of interconnected levels.It's not Guidebook superstition. There is one (1) true path that leads directly to the bottom of the maze by taking 6 staircases. If you look at location codes this is backed up. There are other paths that involve detours that do not lead to the bottom of the maze - some have no stairs beyond the one that took you there, some have only upstairs, etc. You seem to be disagreeing with the terminology of calling them false levels - well, we're calling it that for convenience since it's easy for everyone to understand what we talk about when we talk about false levels. Call it whatever you want, all the levels that don't lead to the bottom greatly increase the tedium as I've laid out on the front page or so.

Al-Khwarizmi

03-08-2014, 01:42 PM

It's not Guidebook superstition. There is one (1) true path that leads directly to the bottom of the maze by taking 6 staircases. If you look at location codes this is backed up. There are other paths that involve detours that do not lead to the bottom of the maze - some have no stairs beyond the one that took you there, some have only upstairs, etc. You seem to be disagreeing with the terminology of calling them false levels - well, we're calling it that for convenience since it's easy for everyone to understand what we talk about when we talk about false levels. Call it whatever you want, all the levels that don't lead to the bottom greatly increase the tedium as I've laid out on the front page or so.
I'm sure there can be several paths that lead to the bottom. It can be true that there is only one path of length 6, and other paths may have length greater than 6. I guess that's probably an artifice of the way the maze is generated - I suppose the code first generates a path of length 6 to guarantee that there is at least one solution to the maze, and then it adds additional branches and ramifications to make the maze more, well, mazey. But not all branches are necessarily dead ends, there are situations where you have downstairs A and downstairs B and any of them can eventually get you to the bottom, even if one is less direct than the other, that's why I wouldn't call them "fake".

Soirana

03-08-2014, 01:51 PM

I'm sure there can be several paths that lead to the bottom.... But not all branches are necessarily dead ends
Nope. The bellow as far as I get it is accurate.
2337
Levels are mostly preset - possible variations are in puncture line.

Superteeth

03-08-2014, 02:50 PM

Nope. The bellow as far as I get it is accurate.
2337
Levels are mostly preset - possible variations are in puncture line.

That's what I see based on experience as well. There is only one true descent ("false" and "true" descents is what I call the variations on the path that you can take through the maze). There are no "fake" levels, they are all real levels where you can spend real-life and game time mapping out for no reason. There are false descents that make you think you are getting to the emperor, and there is one true descent that does get you there. In my experience, none of the branches eventually converge onto the one branch that takes you to the emperor. There is only one branch that does that.

Al-Khwarizmi

03-08-2014, 06:03 PM

Maybe I didn't express myself correctly. In Soirana's graph I could reach the bottom of the maze by following a path 1 -> 2a -> 3a -> 4b -> 5b -> 6a -> 5d -> 6b -> 5e -> 6c -> 7, for example. By the way, very interesting graph. It will look nicer if you swap the positions of 5e with 5d, and of 6a with 6e->7, then it will look almost symmetric.

This is a path that uses 7 of the levels that you call "fake", and that does not use at all three of the levels that you call "true".

Of course, the path that you call "true" is the only one that descends directly, all the time (that's why I said it's the only one with length 6, the others are longer). But you don't necessarily have to follow that path to reach the bottom, there are other paths that lead you there without even going back (note the difference between going up and going back). That's what I mean.

Soirana

03-08-2014, 06:16 PM

Maybe I didn't express myself correctly. In Soirana's graph I could reach the bottom of the maze by following a path 1 -> 2a -> 3a -> 4b -> 5b -> 6a -> 5d -> 6b -> 5e -> 6c -> 7, for example.

Maybe you do not understand even pictures.... 5d and 6b are not guaranteed to have stairs back to main chain.

I am not 100% sure but I guess anything bellow 3d might be cut off from left side of diagram.

By the way it is not Soirana's picture. Pic is 20+ years old and appeared before I started playing adom.

If we are in terminology I think all false thing derives via picking out levels via top trap type in older version. It was possible to determine if you are in main chain or elsewhere really fast.

SirTheta

03-08-2014, 07:06 PM

Basically what Soirana posted / just posted - not all paths actually allow you to get to the bottom (which is a great source of frustration when you lack magic mapping). There are paths that lead you dead ends, and there are paths that don't even link to main place. In any case, I don't see what's to argue - there is one (1) path that requires 6 down staircases to get to ML7. The alternate paths simply add to frustration when you lack magic map because you have to explore the entire level and you have no idea if you're making any progress (I mean...I'm repeating myself here - just go read my post where I lay out the problems with false levels). If you disagree with this reasoning, that's okay, but it doesn't change the one shortest path thing [unfortunately, Djikstra's algorithm has no guarantee of success here since not all nodes are connected]. Have you ever done the maze entirely without MM, Al-Khwarizmi? [this is honest question, not snipe]

Maybe I will play a druid soon and actually map out whole maze to verify graphic, but I have no reason to doubt it since it looks to roughly match my past experiences.

Superteeth

03-08-2014, 07:14 PM

Maybe I didn't express myself correctly. In Soirana's graph I could reach the bottom of the maze by following a path 1 -> 2a -> 3a -> 4b -> 5b -> 6a -> 5d -> 6b -> 5e -> 6c -> 7, for example.

No, you cannot go from 6b to 5e and continue downwards to 7 since there are no stairs up from 6b to 5e. There are only stairs down from 5e to 6b. Again, I could be wrong, but every time I have gone to the maze (about 8+ times), there was only one path that took you to 7. The rest either came to dead-ends or levels with no more stairs down, only stairs up. Those stairs up did not take you to the branch that went down to 7.

aerol

03-08-2014, 07:32 PM

According to Ln, this is the case. Problem is that they give pitiful stat increases (or increases to stats I don't care about) for a lot of corruption. Even if I'm rolling with Khelly and mystic scrolls, the tradeoff is not really worth it.

Interesting. Then we need two separate RFEs, one bringing Keriax's corpse to its former glory, the other increasing stat increases from orb guardian corpses. I would upvote both :D

Al-Khwarizmi

03-09-2014, 02:13 PM

Maybe you do not understand even pictures.... 5d and 6b are not guaranteed to have stairs back to main chain.
I don't think I'm the one not understanding. I never said that path was guaranteed. But by your diagram, it is possible to get to the bottom by the path 1 -> 2a -> 3a -> 4b -> 5b -> 6a -> 5d -> 6b -> 5e -> 6c -> 7. Not in all games, but it is possible (and I did something like that very recently). So it's not true that there is always a single path, that you need to mandatorily follow it to get to the bottom, and that the rest of the levels in the maze are necessarily dead ends. There's one optimal path of length 6, and there may or may not be other branches that lead to the bottom after a longer journey.

Basically what Soirana posted / just posted - not all paths actually allow you to get to the bottom (which is a great source of frustration when you lack magic mapping). There are paths that lead you dead ends, and there are paths that don't even link to main place. In any case, I don't see what's to argue - there is one (1) path that requires 6 down staircases to get to ML7. The alternate paths simply add to frustration when you lack magic map because you have to explore the entire level and you have no idea if you're making any progress (I mean...I'm repeating myself here - just go read my post where I lay out the problems with false levels). If you disagree with this reasoning, that's okay, but it doesn't change the one shortest path thing
True. There is only one shortest path, I never disagreed with that. There can be other paths, they just are longer (and require going up sometimes, not down all the time).

Have you ever done the maze entirely without MM, Al-Khwarizmi? [this is honest question, not snipe]
No, and you can bet I'm not going to do it, ever. As I said some posts before, I think MM is the intended normal way to do the maze (and if it isn't, it should be). I play games to have fun, not to get bored to death. Even if there were only so-called "true" levels (i.e. 6 straight levels to the bottom) I think I'd find it too boring, 3 straight levels or so would be the maximum I could start to call bearable without MM. To me, doing the maze without MM is something like completing the game blind - something that belongs to the realm of challenge games, but it's just not normal play, and people that do it as normal play is either very strange or doing something wrong.

Precisely, if you start from my assumption that the maze is designed to be played with MM, then ramifications actually add to the fun. They mean that you have to do some exploration anyway - not the tedious exploring of every corner of the level to uncover that last tile which might be a stairs, but an exploration of going up and down, waiting and fighting some minotaurs to regenerate PP for more MM castings, etc. I find this pretty fun (although more minotaurs would make it better).

If you start from the assumption that the maze should be played without MM, then of course ramifications only add tedium, but I don't start from that view because I think making the player explore more than 2-3 levels without MM is tedious grinding, so removing MM would make the area unplayable even if you only leave the straight path to the bottom.