The return of Nyarlathotep's Dungeon!

[Nephrite]

Hello and welcome to an information gathering post in regards to the Nyarlathotep's Dungeon tournament board topic.

What is this Nyarlathotep's Dungeon business you speak of?

The Dungeon was a series of team matches, based on the tournament originally started by Super a few years ago. Participants take DL characters and form a team with them. That team fights against pre-determined fights in a series of matches, ending at a boss for each floor. The characters in question level up during the course of the dungeon, as if they were playing their respective games from level 1.

And?

I ran the topic for quite some time, but got kind of burnt out on the DL and the topic in general. Now I'm back!

So?

I am making this topic to get feedback from people, new and old, about this topic and continuing it.

I'd like opinions about a few things;

1. How do you feel the scaling issues (Floor 1 being The Beginning of a game, Floor 2 being Earlygame) can be addressed, if at all? Should there be specific guidelines for games to make it easier on people?

2. Should the multiple team format be readdressed? Perhaps as separate topics? I know it can be daunting to vote on so much at once, but no one is required to vote for everything!

3. Was there anything specific that you feel could be improved on from the old topics?

If there are any other questions, comments or otherwise, please feel free to leave them here, talk to me on IRC or AIM about it. Thanks!

[Yakumo]

Well, just one minor thing I've been thinking of.  I kinda agree with your floors being designed so a team that's all physical or all magical or something is unlikely to get far, but forcing characters to early game forms and making them run a gauntlet of different enemy types on floor 1 takes away from some characters that might have filled a role but don't in the first 15 minutes of the game or whatever, like maybe they haven't learned their magic yet or none of the characters someone wants gets MT until partway through the game, or something along those lines.  I realize that some groups could power through without having everything, but it restricts the team building perhaps a bit too much, in my opinion.  I suggest that the "testing" floor either cover a bit more gametime relative to the others, so more characters have usefulness in it, or it gets moved to later in the dungeon.

[Mad Fnorder]

I too, liked the older style floors that forced you to have a diverse team (Or use abilities of the team you had that you thought would never see use.) The other thing about scaling that might be considered is that the format gives some advantage to characters who join late rather than off the bat, since they have some/most of their skillset already- see Deis, for example. Maybe that should be reflected in their rating somehow?

I liked the two/three team formats. Any more than that and it was a bit dizzying. Alternatively, split and stagger the topics- each team gets a week to be voted on, but one set rotates on Wednesday when another does on Friday? That might be an annoying amount of extra work, however.

One last idea that I was thinking was to make it a bit game-showy, for the people running each team. "You have a choice- get a single free Elixir for the next floor.... or take what's in the box?" I think a little additional randomness would be good, since I felt there was a certain point where people were trying to "crack the code" for the dungeon, rather than just enjoying seeing how far they got. I'm looking forward to the topic's revival, though. Welcome back!

[OblivionKnight]

1) User-submitted floors.  Let us come up with stuff, submit it, and it might be used as a floor or an encounter.

Uh...damn, I had other ideas.   It's a lot to vote on at a time, so I'd say make floors smaller generally (maybe...5 encounters at most), and run two teams at a time, possibly a bonus team that's generic, like a final party team (FF4, for example). 

I think going for scaling and giving a hard thought process is...weird to me.  The "your characters are beginning game, but enemies are endgame!" is an odd concept to swallow.  Make it more open and general.  I think that will help, especially to see more discussion and arguments going.

[Nephrite]

I think going for scaling and giving a hard thought process is...weird to me.  The "your characters are beginning game, but enemies are endgame!" is an odd concept to swallow.  Make it more open and general.  I think that will help, especially to see more discussion and arguments going.

Can you give me an example of what you mean by this?

[Captain K.]

As an example, the one time I played, my characters got owned by Fujin in the first round.  Because she was treated as having her lategame abilities while my guys were stuck at beginning levels.

Let the voters scale to their own tastes, rather than saying Boss X has all powers from whatever form.

[superaielman]

The relative challenge of the floors (should) be scaled so that enemy level or scaling is the same, just varies based on the challenge. Fujin's not an especially hard boss, whereas a real godlike or someone with MT damage would be.

[OblivionKnight]

I think going for scaling and giving a hard thought process is...weird to me.  The "your characters are beginning game, but enemies are endgame!" is an odd concept to swallow.  Make it more open and general.  I think that will help, especially to see more discussion and arguments going.

Can you give me an example of what you mean by this?

A lot of what Capt.K said.  At least with the way I see things, it's kind of odd to see, say, Fujin at the start of the dungeon, and then hear that she is endgame, while your characters are armed with wooden swords.  To me, that should be a slaughter.  I'm mostly suggesting not to say that all enemies you fight are considered to be end-game - it gets headache-y sometime.  If I see Frog at the start of the dungeon, I would assume he has Slurp and Slurp Cut, not his full skillset with Leap Slash, Frog Squash, etc.  It's an odd scaling thing, and I think it's best left up to the individual to decide on that.

As Super said, where the character appears in the dungeon should indicate their scaling - if the boss of the first floor is, say, Lani, that makes more sense than if it's, say, Zophar.  Lani makes sense to be earlier on, and therefore her scaling makes sense for being that early.  For Zophar, it's extremely hard to imagine him scaled for being early.

Granted, that's an entirely different point.  Mostly, I'm talking about PCs.  It just feels odd to say that early-game enemies are on par with their end-game selves, while your early-game ones are...early-game.

[074]

I...guess he's referring to the whole "Enemies have their rough endgame forms, scaled down to your level" deal.  Given...yeah, that still takes choosing to make it so people could get past the first floor (I remember Fujin hype from the earlier records).  However, I'll let OK and Captain K talk about that.

I...don't mind the pacing quite so much (1: Game start, 7: Game end, 10: Well in postgame and fighting Nyarly).  However, I guess there are two things I would want to suggest:

1: I...admittedly feel ambivalent on the issue of moving up what is traditionally the "intro floor".  I mean, on the one end, that's practically the biggest tradition of the whole Dungeon, is the intro floor where we can say things like "lol solt and peppor" and "lol jogurts" and "lol magic vs. onyx", or cringe when a party is lacking a vital element and ends up running out of gas in a hilarious, yet sad fashion when they have literally two members left at the boss (no offense).  On the other hand, however, its position as Floor 1 IS limiting insofar that you need, on average, physical, magic, MT attacks, healing, and status-healing (or psycho-blitzing), all around the start, to stand a good chance on average.  Given, yes, it is supposed to be challenging, but at the same time, some of us do face the "how are we supposed to beat THAT?" dilemma.  Which, while arguably part of the fun, also can be randomly frustrating.

2: I wouldn't mind a slight cast expansion, myself.  No, this doesn't mean you have to stick Blue in there as a character.  Also, if it wouldn't be minded, I guess similar 'profiles' for the Capsule-rank (if that is kept) characters as for the other party members would be enjoyed--some of us have no idea of what some of them are and wouldn't mind having a go-over of such.

[Mad Fnorder]

I wouldn't mind a cast expansion, but I think that for variety's sake, the Jogurt capsule should be axed- that -1 point was too appealing, and 90% of the teams used it by the end.

[074]

I'll have to agree with Fnorder on the Jogurt issue.  While Jogurt did make some teams interesting and worthwhile (The uber-Yuri team came to mind here, IIRC), too many were using it for the whole "sacrifice a slot to get an extra point" deal.  Everyone and their mom seemed to, even, which is regrettable.


...Given, I will still be compelled to make Team Sexy if/when this does revive.

[Yakumo]

Well, the thing is, with the first floor the way it was, most of the good combinations that had both variety early and enough power late had really already been put in by the time the Jogurt option became available, which is a big reason why so many people used it. 

My problem with the floor one requiring everything is that not every character gets their entire skillsets at the beginning of the game.  Especially MT, though that was one of the fights that you could muddle through without it, it still hurt your team a lot if you had to.  A character that's awesome lategame might have very little earlygame utility.  For example, Purim, a 3.5 Borderline Godlike from the old topic.  Lategame, she's got nifty status tricks, buffs, healing, and decent damage.  When you first get her, though, you don't have access to any magic yet.  So she hits things, ST physical damage and that's it.  If you want to use her, you have to compensate heavily for the fact that she doesn't have any tricks on the floor that requires you to have a little of everything, and you've already used 3.5 out of your 10 points, so your options are pretty limited.  6.5 points to split among four more characters, and you still need MT, status healing(or blitzing), magic damage, and probably healing.  Especially since you pretty much need at least two healers to progress or the teams you're fighting will just gang-beat your healer and you're done.

Which makes me think of another possibility, though I haven't thought this one through yet.  Maybe we should have it set up so that the teams are protecting certain characters, like having them in the back of the party?  Like, old RPGs had it so that characters in the front were attacked more often than characters in the back.  Or maybe just have a back row, so certain characters take less damage?  This keeps frailer characters at least somewhat useful instead of just being the first ones that get targeted and dying before they can do anything.  Heck, you could give back row to certain opponents too to balance it out if you needed to, so it doesn't remove too much challenge but still increases character worth.

[VySaika]

I'd love to see Nyarlie's return, and I do agree with OK somewhat about the scaling weirdness. I know I avoided the dungeon for a bit because I just didn't get it. I could not wrap my brain around "enemies are endgame skillsets scaled to earlygame stats while PCs are earlygame stats and skillsets". It just did not work in my head. I'd much prefer being able to just have each voter decide that for themself. Everyone's got thier own views afterall, which is why the results aren't just set in stone from the getgo.

Despite using it myself, I'll also agree on axing the Jogurt rank. Was funny, but prolly should be kicked.

[Nephrite]

All right, then.

I'll remove the scaling and simply let everyone decide on their own! I thought it made it easier for people to gauge things, but perhaps it only ended up over complicating matters.

Let me get the opinion of a few people on a possible Floor 1 revamp with that in mind.

Team Test: Godlike/Heavy/Middle/Light/Capsule

Team Test vs. FF1 Garland (Intro Boss)
Team Test vs. Kwanda, Onix, Humphrey (Durable)
Team Test vs. Jogurt, Ramus, Euram Barrows, Big Joe, Gobi (Joke Characters)
Team Test vs. Luna, Ricardo, Lucia (Buffers)
Team Test vs. Lynx (Boss near the beginning of a game)

The idea of this is simply to have well-known archetypes. Obviously the third fight would be made easier with MT abilities, but I think that it's something that doesn't necessarily require it, as any team with healing could most likely kill any of the "deadly" characters and leave Jogurt alive to heal up.

I think I agree with 5 fights per floor, it's a bit easier to manage.

Edit to Tai: This is just an example, I'm not giving up on the 3.5 format.

[Taishyr]

Mmm. I thought the 4.0/3.5/... was easier but didn't really account for people who weren't consistent (got better or worse) throughout the game. It's kinda hard to do that, but it... hmmm... I may need to work on an idea here, myself.

Actually, looking at it, it compensates decently well for useful early, not useful later, but not so much for project characters, so to speak.

[Mad Fnorder]

I honestly think without some sort of overarching scaling guideline one way or another, things are going to get really fuzzy. To let people decide if they're doing endgame fighters vs endgame enemies, or scaled to time fighters vs. scaled to time enemies, can generate two completely different no-brainer decisions. I mean, we already had plenty of varying opinions about what point in the game gave what powers, (see Tidus and Sonic Steel) so expanding that to not even being clear about what area we're supposed to be arguing over? I don't know, seems like it'd be a little too "This is my interp, lalala" rather than discussing the elements.

And honestly, carrying weaker characters through the earlygame was part of the strategy. I mean, Marcus was in there for a reason- to be decent on floor 1 if you're running people like Cecilia or Terra or Nate. Part of the  point of the Dungeon, one of the really interesting parts, even, was hoping to hold out one more floor under a certain ability unlocked and WHAM, your team build came together- or getting to the aftergame and seeing what sort of candy Neph was handing out.

So, yeah. Count me totally opposed to changing the scaling rules.

[Yakumo]

I understand what you mean about carrying the weaker characters, but I'm saying floor one asked too much and stifled variety.  Look at my example.  Purim in the old format was virtually useless on floor one, but took up over a third of your entire team's points.  Now you have to find four other characters who can do MT damage, heal, status heal or just blitz the status      s, have magical damage, and after all that still have enough left to take on the boss floor, with the enemies scaled to endgame levels.  Marcus is meant to be awesome on the first couple floors, but he's still status bait, can't MT, and doesn't have magic, so he's of little use for half the old first floor, and you still have to find those elements with your remaining five points, AND you still need at least one more decent healing character which cuts down your available points to find that offense even more.  I'm not saying that the first floor can't be at least a little challenging, you can still put pressure on a party trying to carry a slow starter, but I'm saying it probably shouldn't require everything it did before.  Make the fights more balanced instead of one that needs magic, one that needs MT, one that needs status healing, and so on.

As far as the scaling is concerned, we do probably need a set in stone way of looking at it, I'm just not sure always endgame was the best way.  Keeping bosses on the floors to appearing at about the same time they would in-game and scaling the enemy PC's the way you're scaling the player ones may work.  Any other opinions?

[VySaika]

As far as the scaling is concerned, we do probably need a set in stone way of looking at it, I'm just not sure always endgame was the best way.  Keeping bosses on the floors to appearing at about the same time they would in-game and scaling the enemy PC's the way you're scaling the player ones may work.  Any other opinions?

Yeah, I can agree with this. It's easier overall. My issue was with having one scaling for the Team and a completely different scaling for the enemies. It's a bit more work for Neph to make sure that any bosses he uses are bosses in the appropriate times, but not too much more I'd think.

Yeah, I'd be down with doing it this way.

[Nephrite]

I understand what you mean about carrying the weaker characters, but I'm saying floor one asked too much and stifled variety. 

As far as the scaling is concerned, we do probably need a set in stone way of looking at it, I'm just not sure always endgame was the best way.  Keeping bosses on the floors to appearing at about the same time they would in-game and scaling the enemy PC's the way you're scaling the player ones may work.  Any other opinions?

What do you think of the proposed first floor I have up a few posts?

Also, I would be perfectly fine with the way you have things. I can always link specific bosses as certain things, or perhaps even try and cut down on boss usage to accommodate that.

[DjinnAndTonic]

In regards to having a set scaling for bosses on the floors: Would this really be much of a problem to just arbitrarily set? For bosses, only use bosses that appear in the relative time in-game. For the first 2 floors, only use Earlygame bosses, the next three can be Early- or Midgame bosses, etc. For bosses with multiple forms, just state which forms, as appropriate. There may be a few bosses where this causes a problem, but Neph could try to avoid those?

For PCs-as-dungeon-challenges, it's even easier, simply assign a level to the PC depending upon what floor they show up. Earlygame PCs would be around level 5 or 20 depending on the game, and looking up what their skillset would be at that level is generally as easy as going to gamefaqs. While the stats would be harder to accurately obtain, we were using a vague scaling system in that regard already anyway....

It doesn't sound like that much extra work to me, depending upon how well Neph knows the duelers he wants to use?

On an unrelated note, I'd support a few more NR team options, as well.

-Djinn

[Taishyr]

One other thing (tied into both choices and opponents) would be mainly to have most of the opposition be well-known. I think on the old board I threw out a sample floor. Mmm. There's multiple ways this could be fooled around with.

The other idea I had was to do a "beat 3 of 5" setup, where three of the five had to be beaten in order to pass. This combined with the "Well-known/high-vote-able" combo would allow for variety while still being generally well-drawing. I'm probably not being clear, I'm in a mood of half-rage so I'm not exactly at my most coherent.

Team Test vs. FF1 Garland (Intro Boss)
Team Test vs. Kwanda, Onix, Humphrey (Durable)
Team Test vs. Jogurt, Ramus, Euram Barrows, Big Joe, Gobi (Joke Characters)
Team Test vs. Luna, Ricardo, Lucia (Buffers)
Team Test vs. Lynx (Boss near the beginning of a game)

Mmm. Only other thing I can think of is that providing generic stats for the characters would be useful, yes; allows use of, say, Suikoscrubs without much of an issue. And god, now the idea I had for the DLDL comes back to me. Mrf. Lemme think, I know I had other ideas.

[Yakumo]

Hmm.  That test floor... offhand opinion without looking at numbers is that, while it doesn't force a particular party build, it also pings as very weak to me.  The only fight there that looks at all dangerous to me is the second one, and then you get the floor's most pathetic fight right after it to heal up.  Then the boss is Lynx, who not only isn't great but only faces three PCs in his own game.  I'm not suggesting that you need to baby the teams on floor one, I'm only suggesting that you wait to force variety until skillsets have a little time to develop.

[074]

Agreed with Yakko here.  It...honestly looks as if it doesn't pose much of a threat to any team that ISN'T practically Epic Alphonse level...but Yakko pretty much said what I would.

[Dhyerwolf]

I think Match 4 is probably the best test. Those three together could get a decent stalling game, and if MP loss carries over, being able to take that buffing/healing combo down quickly could be interesting.

[Yakumo]

Well, I haven't played SH3 so I can't comment on Ricardo, but neither of the others has much offense to go with their buffs, and I think the only healing there is from Luna.  I admit Ricardo could throw a wrench in there, but I can't say for sure.