Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Game Discussion => Classic Roguelikes => Topic started by: Vanguard on April 14, 2014, 08:41:08 AM
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Any of ya'll in this? Post your username and server so people can spy on or give you advice or something.
I'm van on crawl.s-z.org, but I probably won't play anymore.
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Unfortunately, I'm too bad at the game to play competitively, or I might.
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You know, after seeing the update, I logged into s-z and gave it a few tries.
Wow. Speaking as someone who is hardly a prodigy but has gotten a few all-rune wins, I just couldn't get into it. Did the game change, or did I? Maybe I've just been spoiled by the likes of Sil, where gameplay is streamlined and the action is fast. Either way, the name "Crawl" seems more and more like the perfect moniker. It takes forever to do anything, the least bit of bravado is severely punished, and the only incentive to proceed at anything beyond a crawl's pace is the player's own impatience.
I'd be willing to give it a shot if anyone wanted to make a Mighty Ducks / Meatballs style team of idiots, which is about where I feel like I'd fit in at this point. My username is omniguy.
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Either way, the name "Crawl" seems more and more like the perfect moniker. It takes forever to do anything, the least bit of bravado is severely punished, and the only incentive to proceed at anything beyond a crawl's pace is the player's own impatience.
That's exactly how I feel. Crawl has its strong points, but Sil et al. have every bit as as much cool stuff and way less wasted time.
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I'm new to this game and was worried it was just me... seems like I'm spending an inordinate amount of time luring solitary enemies up the stairs but I still haven't gotten very far (~12th floor now) so I was hoping the game would click. I haven't played on a server but I don't see how y'all could be worse than I am.
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I'm quite terrible at crawl, as I said. It's telling that the guides on the game put such emphasis on the importance of not progressing into unknown territory with monsters already in line of sight. It seems the short lines of sight and the relative lack of escape options other than just running makes it play pretty slow in the early game.
I think another aspect that makes it harder to get into is that simply diving through the dungeon is not what you're supposed to do. Most guides say something like clear a few levels of the orc caves (or whatever it's called), then leave, then clear all but the last level of the lair, establish a stash on the first level of the lair, then go back to the orc cave, etc. It's not what you would guess to do, in other words. Trying to clear the orc place in one go really will get you killed most of the time, etc.
I've never really played a game of crawl in which I applied the above wisdom, but from watching people play, it seems to work.
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awake: it's actually a very interesting game, very fleshed out, with quite a lot to do, but as mushroom patch indicates, you need to do a lot of counter-intuitive and fairly annoying things in order to get there.
for instance, since they revamped how XP is allocated, you need to set XP distribution to manual and pump up your one or two most important skills in the early game (for fighters, this will be the weapon skill.) this makes an absolutely huge difference in terms of survival, and you could play for months and months without even realizing that you could turn off automatic XP allocation. then a month or so more before you realized which ways you should really allocate XP.
then there's stair-luring, pillar dancing, summon spamming, "don't run into the black," blah blah blah.
so let's get this started!! what's our team name? :)
EDIT: LOL, just died to a quokka on level 2. tried to be cautious by resting up to full MP offscreen, but apparently 5 magic darts weren't enough to take it down. in other words, i will not be participating in a crawl tournament now or ever again
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I have to say, I find this thread a little sobering. Here's a bunch of self-professed roguelike fans/developers saying they don't have the patience for one of the standard bearers of the genre. (I would say I lack the time to learn a new game more than the patience, but I don't mean to scold or anything.)
One thing that should be said for crawl is that their online playing facilities are really nicely done, but still only scratch the surface of what's possible in that realm. Public telnet is a big part of the history of dcss and it should play a greater role in future roguelike playing and development.
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I really like the enormous number of races and character builds in crawl. It's cool that the branches are so distinct and you can choose your own order and skip huge amounts of content if you want. I like the great variety of spells that are more than just fire damage, ice damage, etc. As you said, the online features are amazing. That stuff is all well really well done and the crawl team deserves recognition for it.
But man, the game has so many problems that go unacknowledged. Combat is too random - there's a really dangerous late game enemy that can do 3-129 damage in one shot. Maybe it'll tickle you, maybe it'll blow you up. Only the RNG knows. If you cast a spell at an enemy, your spell has a change to fail, and if it succeeds, it has a chance to miss the enemy, and if it hits, the damage range is usually really wide. See: jim's post about quokkas.
So basically, since you can't predict what's gonna happen, you need to do everything you can to stack the odds in your favor, so optimal play means spending the mid-game going through the easiest area available, then the second easiest, and so forth. If you do it right you're rarely at risk but it isn't very exciting. There's not a lot you can do about that in the early game, and so the beginning is the hardest part.
Crawl is really long and repetitive too. The main dungeon has 27 floors and a bunch of branches. The branches are gonna range between 3 and 5 floors and you have to do at least 3 of them. So ignoring ziggurats, special floors and all that, you're looking at 35 floors minimum, usually more. And even individually the floors are huge. That's already way too long, but you're probably going to do even more than that to ensure you have the best equipment possible. You don't want to get killed and start over after putting so many hours into it. And if you're doing a 15 rune run you're going to need to spend twice as long. So even though the different areas are pretty distinct, it ends up feeling repetitive because they're too long and there are too many of them.
I think Crawl is weird about what information it makes available too. They don't want spoilers to be necessary so the game doesn't have Nethack-style cheap shots. And that's well and good. They've also decided to remove harmless fun stuff like potions of poison being slightly beneficial to poison-immune characters, presumably for the same reasons.
What's weird is that even though the game superficially adheres to that anti-spoiler policy, it withholds other vital information and I don't know any way of finding out other than to look it up or ask someone who knows. It doesn't tell you how much a given skill will improve your casting or fighting ability, or what your encumbrance level is after applying your armor skill. It doesn't tell you what your accuracy rating is, or how much damage you'll do with any given weapon. It doesn't tell you how much damage your attacks inflicted either, so it's difficult to gauge the power of your spells and your attacks. Especially since half the time the formula is something like 2d50.
I'm really glad I won in my last run because now people can't say I'm just complaining because it was too hard.
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Here's a bunch of self-professed roguelike fans/developers saying they don't have the patience for one of the standard bearers of the genre.
...and for once they're not talking about Nethack!
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But man, the game has so many problems that go unacknowledged. Combat is too random - there's a really dangerous late game enemy that can do 3-129 damage in one shot. Maybe it'll tickle you, maybe it'll blow you up. Only the RNG knows. If you cast a spell at an enemy, your spell has a change to fail, and if it succeeds, it has a chance to miss the enemy, and if it hits, the damage range is usually really wide. See: jim's post about quokkas.
Yeah, I definitely agree about inconsistent combat damage. This is a really crazy thing that makes no sense. I don't know where roguelike developers got the idea that you can use d20s for damage dice or even more ridiculously d50s or d100s. I have a certain admiration for angband's plus to-dam dominated damage system with big dice weapons and attacks being big by number of dice instead of number of sides. Reasonably consistent damage with some scope for surprises. (I think this is one of the downsides of Sil's streamlining of angband damage, but at least they keep the dice sides under control.)
Crawl is really long and repetitive too. The main dungeon has 27 floors and a bunch of branches. The branches are gonna range between 3 and 5 floors and you have to do at least 3 of them. So ignoring ziggurats, special floors and all that, you're looking at 35 floors minimum, usually more. And even individually the floors are huge. That's already way too long, but you're probably going to do even more than that to ensure you have the best equipment possible. You don't want to get killed and start over after putting so many hours into it. And if you're doing a 15 rune run you're going to need to spend twice as long. So even though the different areas are pretty distinct, it ends up feeling repetitive because they're too long and there are too many of them.
35 floors is too much for your taste? Wow. If it's less than 50, I want my money back!
I'm really baffled by a lot of the commentary to this effect around here. So what's the optimal number of floors to the prevailing tastes? 20? That seems really short to me, for a roguelike.
I'm really glad I won in my last run because now people can't say I'm just complaining because it was too hard.
Well, I suck at the game, so no such accusation here.
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35 floors is too much for your taste? Wow. If it's less than 50, I want my money back!
I'm really baffled by a lot of the commentary to this effect around here. So what's the optimal number of floors to the prevailing tastes? 20? That seems really short to me, for a roguelike.
Shorter, more intense games are a better fit for permadeath. The longer a game is the more frustrating it is to die, and a long game that maintains a high level of intensity becomes inordinately difficult. Long roguelikes like Crawl and Tome resolve this by keeping the average difficulty low with occasional spikes. The end result is that large portions of both games waste your time and can only kill you if you get complacent, and you're more likely to get complacent when you get bored of doing the same thing for hours.
Also, bear in mind that Crawl's floor's are pretty big and diving quickly is much deadlier than it is in Angband.
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the main dungeon isn't 27 floors anymore, I think it's 15 (I think) and then it becomes the "depths" which is 5 levels (I think).
I used to be really into Crawl but I'm a bit burnt out on it now and I find that the generic fantasy world that it inhabits is about as boring as possible. Still a good game and the reality is that it's a must-play for roguelike fans but I'm glad that it's largely in my past.
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oh yeah, I'm in the tourney and I'm going to win a game but it's going to be in as few attempts as possible and I'll stop immediately once I succeed
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the main dungeon isn't 27 floors anymore, I think it's 15 (I think) and then it becomes the "depths" which is 5 levels (I think).
I used to be really into Crawl but I'm a bit burnt out on it now and I find that the generic fantasy world that it inhabits is about as boring as possible. Still a good game and the reality is that it's a must-play for roguelike fans but I'm glad that it's largely in my past.
I agree that crawl's hodge podge of Greek mythology, Tolkien, and AD&D monstrous compendium makes for a fairly uninspiring setting. What's the alternative though? The only answer I seem to be seeing is Cthulhu mythos, which doesn't strike me as any better -- if anything, it's much less coherent.
(I know people like to say "sci-fi!" but this is, in my opinion at least, a departure from the genre and in any case runs into issues of lacking a familiar bestiary, lacking familiar weapons, lacking magic, etc., etc. It's good to be able to say "Look, it's an orc, a monster similar to a human, but evil and okay to slaughter in large numbers. Now look, it's something from Greek mythology. You know what those do!")
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the setting isn't a huge problem, it's just not really a selling point. The best bit is probably the work that's gone into the gods but other games do that better, ie Incursion in my opinion.
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it's a must-play for roguelike fans but I'm glad that it's largely in my past.
I don't understand this. Roguelikes are not literature ("War and peace is a must-read and I'm glad I don't have to read it anymore"). How can one say that this is a must-play while actively avoiding it? If it's such a great game, I would play it. If the game is too difficult/slow, but the end-game content is great, I would try to see the end-game content with dubious means without spending a lifetime slogging through it.
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I don't understand this. Roguelikes are not literature ("War and peace is a must-read and I'm glad I don't have to read it anymore"). How can one say that this is a must-play while actively avoiding it? If it's such a great game, I would play it. If the game is too difficult/slow, but the end-game content is great, I would try to see the end-game content with dubious means without spending a lifetime slogging through it.
because I finished it a bunch of times and experienced everything it has to offer? That's the only reason I avoid it now. It's a great game that I'm largely finished with.
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because I finished it a bunch of times and experienced everything it has to offer? That's the only reason I avoid it now. It's a great game that I'm largely finished with.
Ok, probably misunderstood you. I'm usually sad if I've seen everything a game that I've loved has to offer, not glad -- Glad that it has been part of my past, which is probably what you meant, not glad that it is past.
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(I know people like to say "sci-fi!" but this is, in my opinion at least, a departure from the genre and in any case runs into issues of lacking a familiar bestiary, lacking familiar weapons, lacking magic, etc., etc.
Huh? The average sci-fi story has 10 times more magic than the average fantasy story! :P
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I like all the weird class and race choices in DCSS or Nethack for that matter. Playing as a cat or a vampire beats having five different races of elves, coherence be damned.
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I like all the weird class and race choices in DCSS or Nethack for that matter. Playing as a cat or a vampire beats having five different races of elves, coherence be damned.
Totally. The possibility of unconventional builds is very alluring. For instance, the Octopode has a grapple attack that can be in effect against multiple opponents simultaneously. So: grapple one guy, do damage every round, grapple the next guy, do damage every round. Very cool indeed. However, anything sub-optimal tends to be very dangerous, Octopodes have fairly low HP.
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35 floors is too much for your taste? Wow. If it's less than 50, I want my money back!
I'm really baffled by a lot of the commentary to this effect around here. So what's the optimal number of floors to the prevailing tastes? 20? That seems really short to me, for a roguelike.
I want to hear your opinion on this. How long do you think roguelikes should be, and why?
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35 floors is too much for your taste? Wow. If it's less than 50, I want my money back!
I'm really baffled by a lot of the commentary to this effect around here. So what's the optimal number of floors to the prevailing tastes? 20? That seems really short to me, for a roguelike.
I want to hear your opinion on this. How long do you think roguelikes should be, and why?
Okay. Well, first, I think crawl is fine even at its minimum length of ~35 levels + ascension run as you said. The games I've played the most are moria, angband, zangband, and tomenet, in other words moria derivatives. Hence my 50 levels remark. (Obviously there's some question about whether you really have to play 50 or 100 levels in an angband variant the way you do in Crawl -- in fact, you usually play more than that, but only the small piece you need to get what you want from each level you play and you can dive 20 levels without even fighting any monsters.)
Of course the original rogue was itself pretty short and larn even more so, so there's plenty of room for short games in the genre.
All that said, to my taste, longer remains better for a pretty long time. Why? Essentially two reasons:
First, length increases the significance of a play and especially of wins. The character develops, in its roguelike way, more. Longer games increase the stakes in the game and therefore the atmosphere of danger and risk. Related to this is the sense of loss when your character dies. I understand most people would call this "frustration" or otherwise find it stressful -- I've definitely had frustrating roguelike experiences myself -- but I think this is the path to the dark side. Loss and regret increase the emotional depth of the game.
Second, there's just more stuff in a longer game, given acceptable execution on the author's part. When you try to put the same amount of stuff in a shorter game, I don't believe it can really gel properly. The key thing then is just knowing what to do with all the crap everywhere, not actually finding it. This means more room for turning points in the game -- "Then I got this thing so I could do this and go there, where I found this thing, etc." vs. "Then I got this thing, so I ascended." It's not just items, of course, there's more monster types, more contexts, etc.
I know the current thinking is about intensity (or variation, which I don't believe in yet), which sounds fine. I think the way Sil cuts out the part of the game where you beat down varmints for an hour before anything interesting happens is great, for example. (Similarly, "make your own" items reduces the need to scum/farm/whatever for equipment.) I'd have to win a game before I decide whether 20 levels is good or wack.
Really, I'm reacting to a change in thinking away from ambitious, large world roguelikes toward more bite sized offerings. I just don't see the genre realizing its potential by paring down the number of items, monsters, and levels. Why not just go full graphics then? If you have few enough monsters and simple enough items, why not make it an action RPG?
My feeling is that the strength of roguelikes comes from the lack of graphics and procedural content. Given these two advantages, developers should be able to wildly outstrip what's possible in the current commercial environment in terms of world building (and by the way, there's a real lack of original thinking about how this can be accomplished via the current internet culture).
Anyway, this is turning into another unfocused ramble, so I better stop.
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Good post.
I disagree with the idea that short roguelikes are inherently unambitious. I play tons of shmups and the better ones fit an enormous amount of depth into 30 minutes of content. There's no reason why roguelikes can't do the same.
Another issue is that most long games rely on filler content to pad out their length. If a developer really has 50 floors' worth of unique, worthwhile ideas and wants to make a 50 floor game, I won't tell them not to. Crawl starts to repeat itself itself well before the ending and Angband is nothing but repetition. Compare that with Brogue where every enemy stands out in some way, every element brings something to the game. Brogue is also consistently generates floors that meaningfully change your options in a way that Angband and Crawl can't compete with. Lava, pits, and traps all bring both opportunities and dangers. Treasure rooms can alter the course of the rest of the game. Nothing goes to waste. Crawl, on the other hand, is perfectly happy to let you o + tab your way through orcs for a good hour and Angband hardly lets you do anything else.
e:
I really ought to proofread my posts before posting.
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I have to say, I find this thread a little sobering. Here's a bunch of self-professed roguelike fans/developers saying they don't have the patience for one of the standard bearers of the genre.
Told ya.
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I have to say, I find this thread a little sobering. Here's a bunch of self-professed roguelike fans/developers saying they don't have the patience for one of the standard bearers of the genre.
Told ya.
To be fair, I've kicked plenty of ass in Crawl in my time. My statement was more akin to "man, I can't party like I used to in my 20's" rather than "whiskey tastes yucky!"
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Another issue is that most long games rely on filler content to pad out their length. If a developer really has 50 floors' worth of unique, worthwhile ideas and wants to make a 50 floor game, I won't tell them not to. Crawl starts to repeat itself itself well before the ending and Angband is nothing but repetition. Compare that with Brogue where every enemy stands out in some way, every element brings something to the game. Brogue is also consistently generates floors that meaningfully change your options in a way that Angband and Crawl can't compete with. Lava, pits, and traps all bring both opportunities and dangers. Treasure rooms can alter the course of the rest of the game. Nothing goes to waste. Crawl, on the other hand, is perfectly happy to let you o + tab your way through orcs for a good hour and Angband hardly lets you do anything else.
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I really ought to proofread my posts before posting.
Yeah, what you say here is fair enough, but I think this kind of analysis suffers from too much of a modern game design-y reading of crawl (and maybe angband). So you say, for example, it's sub-optimal that you can/must tab/o-move your way through significant parts of crawl. This is indicative of "filler content," which is bad. The criticism is local: It's about turn to turn game experience. Is the player engaged, are new things happening every minute, etc.? More than that, "filler content" is so bad it's not enough to just offer mechanics to get through it relatively quickly like tab/o-move.
How do you remove this "filler" from crawl? Well, how do you get into a position where you're tabbing through orcs for an hour? I would say you do this by clearing most of the lair first and coming back to the orcs. The player makes a strategic choice that makes one part of the game easier. If tabbing through orcs is so bad though, it must be that it was a mistake to allow the player to do this. What's the solution? Remove the orc cave? Place it after the lair and make it a troll cave instead? It sounds like the solution has to be to straighten out the game so that it's more linear and streamlined.
Streamlined is exactly what you seem to advocate, but more streamlined is going to be more linear (the shortest path between two points is a line -- a fact so robust that it's true in a huge range of situations and not merely as a metaphor). If you're able to do things out of sequence, then it's going to be possible to make a lot of game content trivial, even boring. (This is ignoring the fact that it's fun to play a character you built to be overpowered in some situations.)
I disagree with the idea that short roguelikes are inherently unambitious. I play tons of shmups and the better ones fit an enormous amount of depth into 30 minutes of content. There's no reason why roguelikes can't do the same.
First, short roguelikes are shrinking away from the potential of the genre, paring down their ambition (probably in response to widespread belief that ambitious roguelike projects rarely materialize -- a belief with some justice to it). Roguelikes should aspire to be complex and meandering, full of unnecessary odds and ends. If they don't, they're tending toward what other genres do better with graphics, real time mechanics, and so on.
As to shmups vs. roguelikes, I would need clarification of what you mean here to address it. Are you saying that a lot of practice (hence "depth") goes into winning a shmup with 30 minutes of back to back game content without deaths and retries or are you saying the density of a 30 minute session of a shmup vs. a roguelike should be comparable? (In the latter case, I would disagree with the implication that the shmup has the better roguelikes beat on this front, even the more traditional, longer ones.)
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How do you remove this "filler" from crawl? Well, how do you get into a position where you're tabbing through orcs for an hour? I would say you do this by clearing most of the lair first and coming back to the orcs. The player makes a strategic choice that makes one part of the game easier. If tabbing through orcs is so bad though, it must be that it was a mistake to allow the player to do this. What's the solution? Remove the orc cave? Place it after the lair and make it a troll cave instead? It sounds like the solution has to be to straighten out the game so that it's more linear and streamlined.
That's a good point. Imbalanced difficulty is inevitable in Crawl's non-linear structure. I don't really mind that that, though. Bumpy difficulty curves are more interesting than a smooth ones. The problem is that Crawl's mid game is overall really easy compared to the early and late parts of the game, and it goes on for a very long time. As long as you choose your order well, almost none of it will be difficult.
You could always advance ahead to make the game more exciting, but that's a bad solution. Roguelikes are about using every tactic, every ability, doing anything it takes to win. The genre's punishing nature encourage risk-averse play, even more so in long roguelikes. The player should not have to make bad decisions to stay challenged and entertained. Managing a game's difficulty and pacing are the developer's job.
Another problem is that by about the halfway mark I feel like I'm retreading old ground. Two hours ago I was fighting ogres. One hour ago I was fighting hill giants. Now I'm fighting an ettin. The location and monster type are different but I'm still pressing tab against an enemy with high health, high attack power, and no special abilities. Even if it was harder it still wouldn't be interesting after the 30th time. Crawl's enemy list is large and diverse, but that doesn't always translate into a need for diverse tactics. Against large groups I find a tight hallway and press tab. Against ranged enemies I wait around a corner and press tab.
It doesn't have to be that way. Crawl can be really intense when it wants to be. Vault 5 drops you into a tough situation where you can't get careless. The fire orbs in Zot are some of the scariest enemies I've ever seen in a roguelike. I'd like Crawl much better if it had more moments like those and if I didn't have to cast fireball on yaks for five hours to see them.
What I was saying about shmups is that the better ones manage to pack a huge amount of variety, challenge, and choices into about 30 minutes of content. I think a winning game of Battle Garegga involves more meaningful decisions than a full game of Crawl does, even though it's less than an hour long. The reason is because something important is always happening. Usually several things are happening at once and you can't afford to ignore any of them. That's what I want to see in roguelikes - for something important and exciting to happen on every floor.
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First, short roguelikes are shrinking away from the potential of the genre, paring down their ambition (probably in response to widespread belief that ambitious roguelike projects rarely materialize -- a belief with some justice to it). Roguelikes should aspire to be complex and meandering, full of unnecessary odds and ends. If they don't, they're tending toward what other genres do better with graphics, real time mechanics, and so on.
I like roguelikes primarily because they are single player games that are challenging enough that I have to take them seriously, and because the better ones have enough depth and variety to stay interesting in the long term. For those purposes, short roguelikes are just as good as long ones, and avoid some of the problems and frustrations of long games. I like "unnecessary odds and ends" too, but they aren't my top priority.
I might be wrong, but it sounds to me that what attracts you to roguelikes are their large possibility spaces. Most genres only give you a few verbs to interact with the world. Move. Jump. Shoot. Roguelikes are different. Roguelikes let you reshape your environment, and wield monster corpses as weapons. They dedicate specific commands to cleaning your ears and washing your face. They let monsters level up from killing your NPC allies.
If that's what you're looking for, you'd be better off with Nethack-style roguelikes than the likes of Crawl or Angband. I recommend Ragnarok. It's non linear and chock full of oddities and complex interactions. Even though it's long, it doesn't have much in the way of filler content. Nearly every area introduces something new or has some unique feature. Ragnarok's tactical combat isn't anything special, but if you want to get your character drunk and see what happens when they mispronounce the words on a magic scroll, it's as good as it gets.
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I'll add that very very long game like crawl with permadeath and without accessible and trustworthy escape means strongly discourages experimentation.
It takes several hours to win minimal course. And it might take several days to make allrunes run.
Experimenting with viable builds of allruners is insanely time consuming activity...
I like approach that was implemented in Ragnarok (Valhalla).
If I remember correctly every 10 000 turns it was possible to make permanent save, that wasn't deleted on death.