Instadeath mitigation: "dying" status

[Derakon]

Doesn't vanilla have detection in various forms? Poscheng has the insta-breath-death thing in spades, but you can usually see it coming with various methods.

The goal is to mitigate the "I didn't know this particular monster could do so much damage" problem encountered by players who are learning the game without spoilers. Vanilla does have plenty of detection methods, and learning to use them properly is vital for high-level play, but I consider that to be a separate issue.

[Raajaton]

I think the idea is interesting, but I think I agree with Nick in that these situations are part of the game. If you are unaware of what certain monsters do in a roguelike, particularly towards the end game, then I feel you shouldn't be surprised if you suddenly die. I personally took advantage of Probing a lot in my early games. I didn't want to pull up spoilers every time I met a new mob, but I had the mentality that if I didn't know what something did it would most likely shit on me.

Perhaps making Rods of Probing a little more common would help, and encourage people to actually use them. In my personal experience I feel like they show up very infrequently, and usually rather late in the game. Perhaps if they were to show up earlier, and be a touch more common they may see more use. It still presents an element of risk, since you still need to spend a turn probing. However, used properly a new player can make much more informed decisions about new monsters and uniques they encounter without having to resort to spoilers.

[Nick]

The goal is to mitigate the "I didn't know this particular monster could do so much damage" problem encountered by players who are learning the game without spoilers.

I think the issue here is that it's currently kind of a binary choice - use spoilers (or perfect monster memory, or whatever), or expect the unexpected instadeath. Your suggestion kind of provides a middle ground - but in some ways it goes further.

If the new player has access to perfect information, they still have to take the steps to use that information, whereas under your scheme there would be some freedom to just blaze away and worry about dying once you have the "Dying" status.

It's an interesting idea, and I'm glad it's being explored. It's also kind of amusing to think how the discussion would go if this were the way it had always been, and there was a proposal to remove "Dying" status and just let characters die outright

[Estie]

In the long run, the thing that needs to be done is make @ and player vision overlap. It does that for the horizontal dimension if you have the center always option set, but vertically the window is too small (or range too long).

I assume changing window format is not an easy task, otherwise it would have been done long ago. Nevertheless, this is the core problem that makes people look for workarounds all the time.

Typically things with massive breath damage are very guessable (D), maybe one can find a way to have monsters like drolems announce their threat better, but once learned, the player knows the danger. Dealing with offscreen monsters remains awkward and unfair.

[Derakon]

Typically things with massive breath damage are very guessable (D), maybe one can find a way to have monsters like drolems announce their threat better, but once learned, the player knows the danger. Dealing with offscreen monsters remains awkward and unfair.

The simple solution to this is to make the default window size much taller -- at least twice as tall. Modern displays have more than enough room to accommodate a taller window, and the game becomes significantly smoother when you aren't constantly scrolling your view around. I can't remember the last time I had to deal with a monster that was off the edge of the screen.

[debo]

The simple solution to this is to make the default window size much taller -- at least twice as tall. Modern displays have more than enough room to accommodate a taller window, and the game becomes significantly smoother when you aren't constantly scrolling your view around. I can't remember the last time I had to deal with a monster that was off the edge of the screen.

I've always found the ranges involved in angband + variants to be totally ridiculous, considering the displays that they were intended to work on. I wonder if this is one of the things that makes ranged combat so OP, you can hit things from 30 squares away which makes it impossible for monsters to close on you fast enough.

What would happen if the absolute max range that anything could hit/spell from was 10 squares? A centered display with height 24 would be able to handle this no problem. Also, isn't there already some option to kinda do this for tiled displays?

Even Sil suffers from this quite a bit, with decent strength you can shoot arrows a totally obscene distance relative to the scale that the rest of the game operates on. Throwing weapons are better, but not by much.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

For those of us playing on laptops, the offscreen monster issue remains. Checking out Fizzix's "Let's Play Angband" videos, the offscreen monster also seemed to happen quite often. I don't know what kind of set-up he has. Modern displays? My PC laptop died and I recently switched to a brand new, top of the line, MacBookPro with 15" Retina display. The offscreen monster issue still exists for me.

Nonetheless, I'm still in favor of keeping instadeath. It seems more "real" to me that some things are just that dangerous.

[debo]

TL;dr -- reduce all ranged attacks to be effective from at most 10 squares away, and turn on total monster recall for everyone. Problem solved, and it's probably a 20 line commit or something

[Derakon]

There's already an option to reduce ranges (and sight radii, I think). It was added for better play on mobile devices, but there's nothing stopping you from using it on a "normal" computer.

[Nick]

In restructured V maximum sight and maximum range will be values in an edit file.

[half]

I'm also interested in reducing these in Sil (especially if I can add Shockbolt's tiles).

In restructured V maximum sight and maximum range will be values in an edit file.

What is the effect on difficulty? AFAICT, we are talking about reducing these ranges for both monsters and the player, so it is not clear if this increases or decreases difficulty. I ask because it would be nice to allow the player to choose as a quasi-interface option (they might like playing with shockbolt tiles or on a small screen), but if it changes difficulty a lot or has to be a 'birth option', then it may interact badly with ladders/comps.

[Nick]

What is the effect on difficulty? AFAICT, we are talking about reducing these ranges for both monsters and the player, so it is not clear if this increases or decreases difficulty. I ask because it would be nice to allow the player to choose as a quasi-interface option (they might like playing with shockbolt tiles or on a small screen), but if it changes difficulty a lot or has to be a 'birth option', then it may interact badly with ladders/comps.

I've only tried the half-range option a bit, in FA, and it didn't seem to make a lot of difference difficulty-wise. That's setting view and effect ranges from 20 grids down to 10.

I suspect if you set it down to really low numbers it would have a big effect - probably harder for the player, because they wouldn't be able to take out monsters with no ranged attack from a safe distance so easily.

Part of the beauty of putting it in an edit file is if it all goes pear-shaped, players only have themselves to blame

[Lord Tom]

The goal is to mitigate the "I didn't know this particular monster could do so much damage" problem encountered by players who are learning the game without spoilers. Vanilla does have plenty of detection methods, and learning to use them properly is vital for high-level play, but I consider that to be a separate issue.

With the goal elucidated like that, (and having just suffered an Instadeath yesterday at like 3600'), I'd expand it into 2 problems:

1. I don't know a monster can do very large damage of a particular type due to inexperience
2. I'm familiar with all the various monsters, but had no idea such a monster (large pack of hounds, very OOD monster) was on the level

...and suggest a solution could be a simple warning/feeling add-on if there's a monster/pack who can insta-death you somewhere on the level, e.g.:
Level Feeling - [Normal danger-level feeling] + "and you have a premonition of your sudden demise"

or

On Seeing Insta-Death monster: "Looking at [monster name] you have a premonition of death without warning."

Anyways, just a thought. I think the 2-step insta-death idea is novel and constructive but overall wouldn't be in favor, apart from a beginner mode or some such.

[debo]

With the goal elucidated like that, (and having just suffered an Instadeath yesterday at like 3600'), I'd expand it into 2 problems:

1. I don't know a monster can do very large damage of a particular type due to inexperience
2. I'm familiar with all the various monsters, but had no idea such a monster (large pack of hounds, very OOD monster) was on the level

...and suggest a solution could be a simple warning/feeling add-on if there's a monster/pack who can insta-death you somewhere on the level, e.g.:
Level Feeling - [Normal danger-level feeling] + "and you have a premonition of your sudden demise"

or

On Seeing Insta-Death monster: "Looking at [monster name] you have a premonition of death without warning."

Anyways, just a thought. I think the 2-step insta-death idea is novel and constructive but overall wouldn't be in favor, apart from a beginner mode or some such.

The problem you're facing here isn't so much the "instadeath" problem as it is the "hounds are literally the worst thing ever problem"

At least Vanilla doesn't have Hounds of Tindalos!!!!! (Or Aether hounds, iirc?)

[mushroom patch]

In my opinion, if anything, the game is already too easy. Allowing the player to get out of situations he shouldn't have allowed to happen in the first place is not the way to go. I don't really understand the "no spoiler" perspective, but even if you are going no-spoiler, you don't really need to fight things you don't want to, so just don't if you're unsure. As far as accommodating the hypothetical no-spoiler player, I think the right way to go is adding cues to monster descriptions and emitting messages that indicate what the monsters might breathe and what kinds of status afflictions they can cause.

Regarding the way the vertical vision works, it's totally nuts that this is still a thing. In the console interface, I don't know of any way to change it, although the way I remember it, even in the early 00s, zangband had resizable (not console) windows and the map display responded to resizing. I kind of agree with people saying lines of sight are too long as well. Some kind of happy medium between omg great plains on a clear winter day vision of current angband and the max of 10 in crawl would probably help there.