[bkcooper]

There's been a big push to shorten the game, constantly trimming out levels. I think some aspects of that turned out pretty well (I was skeptical of the D to D + Depths transition but ultimately I came around on it) but I actually liked the slightly longer game. The stretches of the game where I can get in a flow state and smash are usually among the more enjoyable.

My impression is that the devs who have been most influential for the last two to three years find that element of the game boring and instead want to put you in more "interesting" situations (e.g. forcing a rune before entering Vaults, increasingly strong new monsters in Depths.) I find that a lot of those things don't meaningfully decrease my chances of winning or force creative new strategies. Instead, they encourage me to do more tedious things like isolating single monsters, stair dancing, etc.

In fairness, I think my opinion on this was probably in the minority among heavy players at the time.