Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

It's not clear to me that is better: Sil has reasonably small levels, and I think they can be taken more at face value than as abstractions

Despite what I just said in my earlier post, I like this approach too. I'd just like Sil to telegraph this idea to the player somehow: that individual dungeon levels are more than abstractions. This might not be as intuitive as you think in a game with infinite dungeon levels. Are there other significant mechanics tied to dungeon levels, or is losing any artifacts on the level the odd one out?

Maybe for us veteran Angbanders it is harder than usual to treat dungeon levels as something more than an abstraction. People used to other roguelikes treat dungeon levels with more respect.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

This suggests another alternate version of preserve mode which I'd be much happier with: preserve artefacts unless they've been seen (rather than identified).

Yes, this would be perfect.

In my mind, unseen areas of a generated dungeon level are just as "real" as levels that have not been generated yet. Having different game mechanics for these two bothers me a bit in a game with infinite dungeons and mechanics that push you to dive.

It seems really cool that after you've seen an artifact, if you can't step on up and handle the challenge, you will permanently lose the item. It even feels completely fair that you are then further punished by a reduced chance to find other artifacts.

EDIT: Preserve off is not the important mechanic here. Fudging the artifact generation chance down by 10% or more sounds like a similar but much more powerful effect. Ideally you shouldn't do it until the player has seen the artifact. This sounds like it might be a bit tricky to implement, but maybe not.

[Scatha]

Well obviously the stuff about "true preserve mode" is a strawman since I'm talking about the preserve mode of vanilla.

The point was that the behaviour depending on whether items had been in-game-identified, which I found completely unpalatable, could be avoided. I was trying to find a better preserve mode, not build up a strawman!

The most intuitive notion of searching for items, including artifacts, is that you should explore the dungeon and kill monsters. Without regard to trying to fully explore levels. It is completely unintuitive to think that taking the stairs could have any conceivable effect on your chance of finding artifacts, other than changing the depth at which you're searching.

Thanks, this section was really helpful for me to understand the intuition driving the idea of preserve mode: the idea that levels are just an abstraction which realise the idea of a huge dungeon stretching on and on.

This suggests another alternate version of preserve mode which I'd be much happier with: preserve artefacts unless they've been seen (rather than identified). This has much less potential to distort behaviour, since you'll never know what it is you're not seeing. The only distortion I can think of is that it might make you reluctant to use Staves of Treasures on a level if you're worried you might be forced off. You might reduce the radius of Treasures (something we'd wondered about anyway) if this was an issue.

It's not clear to me that is better: Sil has reasonably small levels, and I think they can be taken more at face value than as abstractions, but I appreciate the idea of wanting something in that direction.

That's exactly what I already said (that the point of the system was to make the first couple artifacts more common rather than making the last couple less common). I didn't expand, for the sake of brevity, but if I had, I would have noted that the fudging of artifact rolls based on the number that had been generated is presumably just a hack which allows the initial artifact generation chance to be abnormally large.

Sorry, when you referred to making the first couple of artefacts more likely I thought you meant ensuring that artefacts could reasonably be found early in the game (which is also an issue), rather than making sure everyone has some across playthroughs.

However, I don't think that there's a real distinction between making the early ones more common and the later ones less common (with an appropriate shift in baseline rarity). It's all trying to deal with the problem that you get the best stories when there are somewhere between, say, 4 and 12 artefacts you come across over the game, but that some characters explore a lot more than three times as much of the dungeon as others, so we don't want to make the number of artefacts found linear with the amount of dungeon explored.

This does follow a story-logic. It's not that the dungeons are actually infinite, but that we don't know how large they are. In stories (characters) where they're larger, you have to cover more ground to find the artefacts.

The normal vanilla system with preserve=on would work perfectly in Sil, and would remove the counter-intuitive and frustrating consequence of leaving levels unexplored - that you can permanently lose artifacts by doing so.

I think this mindset is ported over from Angband, where it's more correct. It's a little weird talking about losing things permanently in Sil, since nothing is permanent -- it only lasts a few tens of thousands of turns. Sure, you might never find Glamdring because it was on the floor on a level at 600' you abandoned, but you're far more likely never to find Glamdring because it just never gets generated. So Glamdring was never really yours to lose.

[half]

I wonder how self-smithed or automatically dropped artefacts enter this equation.

They have no impact on it, to avoid any weirdness about trying to not kill Boldog or something.

Indeed, the player needn't know about the rule at all.

[taptap]

frustrating consequence of leaving levels unexplored - that you can permanently lose artifacts by doing so

Did you ever notice this in the game - being starved of artefacts in the late game because of stair use earlier? Then it may be a fair argument that chars somewhat below the power curve are further punished by having access to less artefacts. For me pointing out the effect was certainly theoretical as I tend to find artefacts in the throne room and sometimes the best of all during ascent while not even looking - but admittedly I default to explore full floor, go down when I am not in need of stair use.

Btw. I find it far more frustrating when I find strong artefacts when I already committed to a different build (like the wonderful artefact (light) swords with my recent polearm master), when I walk past artefacts without noticing and only see them in the notes afterwards or when I find seriously underpowered artefacts I have no use for (Boots of Irime) than getting a point on some artefact-counter where I don't notice it at all. I wonder how self-smithed or automatically dropped artefacts enter this equation.

Either way, you don't need a full set of artefacts to win the game. Most chars that make it to 1000 ft. have a fair chance of taking home a Silmaril.

[BlueFish]

I think you are fooling yourself that Preserve mode is intuitive, perhaps because you're used to it from Angband. A true Preserve mode, which allowed artefacts to be generated again whether they'd been identified or not (so long as there was never more than one on the level), would at least be simple, if somewhat odd.

Well obviously the stuff about "true preserve mode" is a strawman since I'm talking about the preserve mode of vanilla.

Having differing behaviour based on whether something has been identified is really quite strange.

I strongly disagree, in that I think this idea favors theory over practice.

The most intuitive notion of searching for items, including artifacts, is that you should explore the dungeon and kill monsters. Without regard to trying to fully explore levels. It is completely unintuitive to think that taking the stairs could have any conceivable effect on your chance of finding artifacts, other than changing the depth at which you're searching.

That clear intuition is broken by preserve=off, for the reasons I've already stated, having to do with the (counter-intuitive and non-obvious) "celestial compass" which guides the player to levels on which artifacts can be found, but then penalizes the player by not allowing those artifacts to ever be found again, if they are not found there. This is the effect of preserve=off, and this is why that's not the default in Vanilla.

To find something wen you have zero clue about its whereabouts, you simply cover ground and search. You don't pre-occupy yourself with gaming the system by fully exploring one partion of an infinite space before exploring another partition of that infinite space. One part of teh dungeon should be identical to another for the purposes of finding stuff. That assumption is what is broken by the theoretical "logic" of preserve=off.

I do get the theory - that the same thing can't be in two different places. But in practice, the player isn't confronted by that idea often, and when they are, it's hardly frustrating.

Point taken about the odd tactics of not IDing artifacts you're not interested in - but those tactics would not be encouraged by preserve=on. They'd be encouraged by the fudging of artifact rolls based on number that had already been found. That fudging could also easily be done away with.

It's been made clear that artifacts aren't that powerful in Sil to begin with. It's ok not to over-design the artifact system to make sure a certain number are found in a game. It's ok to be more random. This would not be rocket science to balance. The game would stand on its own with no artifacts at all. There's huge wiggle room between that, and making artifacts so common that they make the game too easy.

I'm not sure you're engaging with the answers we're giving. I explained that the problem is not the luck-based variance, but giving regular characters enough artefacts to have fun with while not making things ridiculous for the power characters.

That's exactly what I already said (that the point of the system was to make the first couple artifacts more common rather than making the last couple less common). I didn't expand, for the sake of brevity, but if I had, I would have noted that the fudging of artifact rolls based on the number that had been generated is presumably just a hack which allows the initial artifact generation chance to be abnormally large.

All of this has been over-designed, IMO. (In a game that you and half did a remarkable and impressive job of avoiding that pitfall.) The normal vanilla system with preserve=on would work perfectly in Sil, and would remove the counter-intuitive and frustrating consequence of leaving levels unexplored - that you can permanently lose artifacts by doing so. While that makes some logical sense from a shallow perspective, actually, in an effectively infinite dungeon in which you're searching for stuff, changing levels should have zero effect. Logically. And that's not a point of pedantry, it's actually how people think.

[taptap]

+1 to starhawk. Convenience tops realism concerning armour swapping. It also encourages strategic thinking and varied playstyles = more meaningful decisions in the game.

Nobody "plays" pacifists, they "work at" pacifists.

But yeah point taken. Artifacts could still drop from chests though.

Personally, I rank my (semi-)pacifists among my most tense and exciting characters. How can it get more exciting than a char that can be killed by literally everything?

Artefacts: When I played with a staff of treasure and repeated the 900/950ft once and probably got lucky - I already complained about too many artefacts in the forum. Preserve on wouldn't help the players close to the turn limit but those very powerful who have plenty of time to scout 900/950ft. repeatedly and don't need more help. But you can say, the automatic drops are in a way preserve on, so if you want to build around a certain artefact take one of those, as you are more likely to get them (They are: Spear of Boldog, Glend, Delmereth and Galvorn Armour of Maeglin.) or wait until christmas.

[Starhawk]

I have mixed feelings on this. I don't like the realism issue of quick armour switches, and I don't like the gameplay encouragement to micromanage. On the other hand, with the single exception of forging, every action in Sil takes one turn. There is a simplicity to this which makes it easy to understand, and an elegance which makes it appealing as a mechanic.

There are some actions which are compound, and so in effect take more than one turn, such as tunnelling through quartz or granite, but I don't see an easy way to break up the armour exchange without demanding that you first spend a turn taking off your old armour -- which would get annoying extremely quickly.

If you break armor exchanging into two turns (remove A / wear B), the next question you get will be someone asking why you don't have to put away your weapon and shield to use a bow.... or why you don't have to have a free hand to drink a potion.... or how many turns it should take to chew an herb.....

Don't give in! If I want ultra realism, I'll go run around the woods chasing deer.

[Scatha]

Personally I'd be fine with (and would prefer) the simpler and more intuitive system of preserve=on and no fudging of the artifact rolls depending on number already generated.

I think you are fooling yourself that Preserve mode is intuitive, perhaps because you're used to it from Angband. A true Preserve mode, which allowed artefacts to be generated again whether they'd been identified or not (so long as there was never more than one on the level), would at least be simple, if somewhat odd. Having differing behaviour based on whether something has been identified is really quite strange.

This might make the standard deviation of number of artifacts found greater, but the average the same. That sort of randomness is fun in its own right, and is a core gameplay principle of roguelikes, to me.

I'm not sure you're engaging with the answers we're giving. I explained that the problem is not the luck-based variance, but giving regular characters enough artefacts to have fun with while not making things ridiculous for the power characters.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Good point, however it is still more realistic than all alternatives.

The traditional, pure random artifact generation method might not be preferable gameplay-wise, but I don't think it is in any way unrealistic.

Think of it this way: the game is capable of generating infinite different dungeon levels, but we don't actually believe that all those levels actually exist in the Morgoth's halls, do we? I'd say there are only about a hundred levels or so.

It's the exact same situation with artifacts. Maybe the game is capable of generating a hundred different artifacts, but only ten or so of them actually exist in the dungeons. The exact number might vary from game to game.

Only what actually happens in the game truly exists in the imaginary game world, and only this part needs to be plausible. We don't have to rationalize anything else.

[half]

Have you ever played any of the games (mostly they are on nintendo consoles and handhelds) in the Shiren the Wanderer: Mysterious Dungeon series?

On the subject of armour swaps: What if you couldn't swap armour if any monster was aware of you? It would emulate armour swapping being an action too long to do in the middle of battle without it actually being multi-turn.

I haven't played Shiren, but have heard a lot about it and admire it. Sil's mechanics are aimed at approximately a pen and paper RPG level, with some mechanics that are a bit more like boardgames. Shiren is much more boardgame like. Perhaps a cross between a boardgame and a platformer? I really like the explicit sequences of monsters that take one mechanic and keep iterating on it, though they would be a bit out of place in Sil. As would many of the mechanics themselves. In general, Shiren is quite cute and abstract, which lets it get away with a grab-bag of interesting strong mechanics. Every now and then we come up with neat mechanics but realise they won't work with the flavour of Sil.

Your armour swapping idea is neat, and along a good track. It wouldn't quite work though as it would let you know if the monster in the other room had become unwary. You could do it with visible monsters only, but it is a bit odd that it is better to not be able to see the invisible ones, or to turn your light off etc.

[half]

+1. The mechanic doesn't sound real-world realistic, but that doesn't bother me. A celestial compass is not unrealistic in Middle Earth, artifacts have a will to be found... Funnily enough the exact same reasoning can be used to justify preserving artifacts.

These are also good points. Nice to see you around again Mikko.

[half]

In terms of realism, the current method (and the method it was designed to emulate) implies a sort of celestial compass the player uses to draw them to levels on which these finite artifacts were generated.

Good point, however it is still more realistic than all alternatives.

[Patashu]

What if you could only swap armour in phone booths?

This is meant in jest, but it's a pretty interesting idea (maybe not for Sil though because it would be hard to justify what kind of physical 'thing' this armour swapping station would be)

[Mikko Lehtinen]

On the subject of armour swaps: What if you couldn't swap armour if any monster was aware of you?

What if you could only swap armour in phone booths?