Are autoexplore and autofight (ala DCSS) worth it in V to reduce early game tedium?

[Estie]

Well, I guess the grognards have spoken. I'll summarize what I've heard:

The game is fine.

Thematically, it's a sandbox where epicness matters, but only when people compare Angband to anything else, especially if on reddit. Angband is its own game, where the nearly-vacant fortifications to the impregnable successor to Utumno are guarded by molds, jellies, and fruit bats. Heroes are hauling around trash bags of potions while effortlessly killing Satan and his minions because they lack object permanance and you are slightly out of view. This is all fine because reasons.

The defaults are also fine, unless they're not, but then that's your fault. You're free to play any way you want to, and if you're not having fun, you're playing it wrong, but there's no "right" way to play. Reddit is very bad and no one should ever go there. The end.

You have a way of showing things in a hilarious light.

A few points:

I think there was 1 comment somewhere dissing reddit ? You make it seem like theres some war going on here.

As for molds and bats, the LotR had Bill Ferny and neekerbreekers for starting encounters. I see nothing wrong there. You see, we arent really playing Angband. We are actually playing Moria II with the powercreep incursion that sequels are wont to have.

"The game is fine as is" is a strange statement considering all the substantial changes Nick has made since he became maintainer. In fact, there are people who mourn the loss of a maintained vanilla Angband tradition and call his game a variant, and they have a point.

Now maybe changing the first 10 levels would be a good idea and maybe not, but is this really such a big deal ? If the suggestion to do such is met with conservative caution for this very old game, that clearly is reason for a satiric dismissal with, hopefully pretent, finality.

[smbhax]

Also also, in DCSS, it is quite common even for veteran players to die on, like, level 4 (there's an odd difficulty spike at level 4, it seemed to me), or other early level. And because even a winning game is much shorter, you're playing through the early stages of DCSS much, much more frequently than in Angband.

And they're awful.

[Sphara]

Both DCSS and Angband punish you greatly, if you play real-time fast with more frail character. Both games also have very easy early game, IF you always pick something like Minotaur Berserker or Half-Troll Warrior. Also, if you die often, you're gonna find yourself playing the early game often.

I have nothing against adding an autoexplore in angband. It's just that I'd not use it myself. Again, my way of enjoying roguelikes is not smashing fast through the early levels. In DCSS, I played for streaks. In Angband, I mostly play for minimizing the turns.

[Djabanete]

When I tried out DCSS after much experience with Angband, I did not expect to like autoexplore. My hjklyubn key usage was, I felt, way too expert for me to need autoexplore. I was totally wrong. Autoexplore turned out to be great in DCSS. Others in this thread have mentioned two reasons that DCSS may need it more than Angband: (a) DCSS has weirder-shaped levels with fewer straight lines, and (b) in Angband you don't need to clear levels. That said, it sounds plausible to me that many players would enjoy autoexplore in Angband. Many players enjoy clearing Angband levels, and many who don't typically clear levels could find satisfaction in doing so with autoexplore.

If you end up implementing autoexplore and/or autofight, please do share!

[wobbly]

Poscheng derivitives have auto-get which I miss when playing characters with a shooter. Also fast travel to stairs and loot which I don't use but others seem to like.

[Nick]

Well, I guess the grognards have spoken. I'll summarize what I've heard:

The game is fine.

Thematically, it's a sandbox where epicness matters, but only when people compare Angband to anything else, especially if on reddit. Angband is its own game, where the nearly-vacant fortifications to the impregnable successor to Utumno are guarded by molds, jellies, and fruit bats. Heroes are hauling around trash bags of potions while effortlessly killing Satan and his minions because they lack object permanance and you are slightly out of view. This is all fine because reasons.

The defaults are also fine, unless they're not, but then that's your fault. You're free to play any way you want to, and if you're not having fun, you're playing it wrong, but there's no "right" way to play. Reddit is very bad and no one should ever go there. The end.

If that's what you heard, I don't think you were listening very carefully

For what it's worth, I think your experiment with autoexplore and autofight is an interesting one, and raises some good questions. In fact, it has gone further toward persuading me that autoexplore might be a valid addition to Angband than any previous such argument. I'm not sure if you're aware, but there is a kind of primitive version of autoexplore already existing, where you can target any grid on the screen, and the game will attempt to pathfind toward it. This may not be immediately obvious to new players, but Angband is quite a complex game, and it's hard to make every feature of it apparent at first glance.

As for the reddit issue, my reaction is partly due to many, many years of reading r/roguelikes and being told that Angband is too grindy and DCSS and ToME are much better by people who haven't played it since 1998. There's also been a fair few cases of people showing up here and starting threads about how Angband should be more like DCSS. So I thought it was worth at least putting the position that Angband is its own game, and that popularity - even relative popularity among roguelikes - isn't necessarily the best judge of what direction it should take.

Note that I'm not saying that Angband should not change; in fact, I would probably have changed it more if not from pushback from some of the, er, grognards here (all of whom I love ). If you were to make a fork with autoexplore and autofight and maybe other changes, people are likely to play it, and some of your changes are fairly likely to end up being incorporated into V. Your ideas are well thought-out and (last post aside) reasonably expressed

[smbhax]

In the back of my mind, I can't help thinking that if your game needs autoexplore, you've got the design all wrong; you're saying that your regular gameplay is so boring, it needs to be automated.

Obviously that's a knee-jerk and pessimistic take, but--aren't there ways the early game could be made more interesting for everyone, even the jaded old timers? Rather than having to resort to making the computer play it for you?

More interesting dungeon features that require active decision making by the player? Smarter AI that requires intelligent stratagems? More monster types and behaviors? Dungeon layouts that simulate recognizable areas that would inspire the imagination, like lairs or barracks or mines or forges or laboratories?

I just think making a big skip button--which is what autoexplore/autofight are, basically--is the wrong way to go. Look what's happened to DCSS: later stages look amazing, even in character graphic mode, but the early stages, the ones where everyone would be using the autoexplore and autofight, look absolutely terrible, and have awful balance--because nobody cares anymore and just skips them.

When I was playing DCSS, starting over again, alternating the autoexplore and autofight buttons to spam through the early stages AGAIN, I was just dreaming of making it to stage 10 or so, where the fun stages start--and incidentally, those stages look, more than anything else, like simplistic Angband stages--heck, almost Rogue stages. But those boxy rooms and short corridors have bottlenecks and flanking passages, and militarized AI groups with tough officers in unpredictable ambushes, and occasional incredibly dangerous lurking monsters; they feel structured and meaningful, even though they're just random grid layouts, more or less.

But they don't last very long. And the game has other fairly deep-seated design issues. And I didn't want to auto-spam through those gawd-awful early stages ever again--because THAT is not a game, it's just a chore, that could use something like Homer Simpson's keyboard-pressing drinky bird to automate the automating button pressing. And I'm more interested in long games, even endless games. So I came back to Angband.

If people are saying they can't stand playing your levels, make better levels. Or just rip them out, start everyone at level 10, and add 10 levels to the end game if you still want that big #100. : P

Autoexplore and autofight are a huge game design crutch.

[Gwarl]

People who think a 'bump nearest monster' button is too much; how do you justify a 'shoot/zap nearest monster' button? On some characters I'll press it to zap an adjacent monster. Why can't my melee characters have the same convenience?

Again, consider that frog/composband has autofight capabilities; it hasn't damaged the game at all, the players simply ignore the feature.

As wobbly says said variants also have autoget which is the most useful part of DCSS autoexplore. The second most useful part is basically equivalent to angband's 'run' feature in utility.

[tangar]

I don't like auto-thingy as it ruins atmosphere of the game... makes it kinda dull semi-automatic. Imagine to have such feature in WoW - to press the button and move toward next mob automatically... it breaks world integrity. In rlg it's the same.

In the back of my mind, I can't help thinking that if your game needs autoexplore, you've got the design all wrong; you're saying that your regular gameplay is so boring, it needs to be automated.

+1

I would add that in certain way it's possible to play Angband in a boring style - by grinding low lvls again and again... But I personally don't play like this (and even disabled such way of gameplay in my multiplayer variant).. so it depends on your playstyle. If you like roguelikish gameplay - you dive deep and go on the edge (depends on class.. some weak class are hard to play even at low lvls)... but for careful grind - such option with autoexploration could be good. I just opposite to such anti-roguelikish way to play the game. Though all people have their own favorite way to play.. "Every man to his taste"

[Gwarl]

I don't like auto-thingy as it ruins atmosphere of the game... makes it kinda dull semi-automatic. Imagine to have such feature in WoW - to press the button and move toward next mob automatically... it breaks world integrity. In rlg it's the same.

But how is this different from being able to target and fire an arrow/spell in a single keypress?

[tangar]

But how is this different from being able to target and fire an arrow/spell in a single keypress?

you see enemy - you fight to it. then you use your 'legs' and move towards next spot, investigation other rooms and corridors, making decisions where to put your next step. you have the same actions which you will have in real-life in such situation. when you press the button to move toward next enemy automatically with autoexploring half of the level - it's dull and break atmosphere of the game, world integrity, narrative... it's kinda give feeling of playing in 'wizard' (cheat) mode.

[Gwarl]

I have to disagree. When I see a pack of wolves who aren't going to hurt me with a mage I'm like 'cool I press one key and they all die', with a warrior it's like 'oh boy this again' despite it being even less threatening to the @. To the point where I'll even use a bow or zap them with a hybrid simply because that's more automatic.

[tangar]

I speak about auto-exploration thingy, not about stuff which makes combat faster.

Considering latter, the thing is that in Tangaria (or other V multiplayer variants) there is already auto-retalliation option as gameplay goes in semi-turn-based mode (and you can control the time - slow it down or make it faster).. so you come close to monster with melee character - you attack it automatically with basic melee blows. Also there is fire-till-kill option which allows you to make attacks (including shooting or magic spells) until enemy dies.

Maybe such instruments should be ported and adapted to V?

[Zorbus]

I used to really be against autoexplore, and like many others, thought that if it is needed, then there's something wrong with the game's level generator.

I've since then completely changed my mind on autoexplore, but still can't stand DCSS and especially its level generators. But you can definitely benefit from autoexplore on almost any kind of maps.

In games where you tend to explore the dungeon level fully, autoexplore is great for getting to those last unexplored areas, even if you don't use it as much when the level is mostly unexplored and populated.

One other QoL feature that autoexplore also has is that it picks autopickable items.

One alternative to continuous autoexplore is what I call "burst" autoexplore, where pressing the explore-key takes you only to nearest unexplored tile or nearest item to autopick. Feels like you are more in control that in continuous autoexplore.

I've experienced with these things and other QoL-stuff a lot in my game Zorbus. Compared to most other roguelikes, the levels are biggish (up to 128x128 tiles), and very dense with stuff, but still, (burst) autoexplore is very convenient to have. There's also continuous autoexplore if that's what you want.

http://www.zorbus.net

Example dungeon maps to showcase the density: http://www.zorbus.net/dungeon.html

I also have a command for approach & melee attack. You can also use it just approaching a fleeing enemy to narrow the distance, and then make a ranged attack. The target creature is automatically set, and is marked with a symbol on its tile.

These tutorial images show the command set and the symbols for melee/ranged/talent (spell) targets:

http://www.zorbus.net/tutorial/index.html

If I were a Angband dev, I would probably experiment with a very basic burst autoexplore, just to try out how it would feel. It would be a big change to the game, but still smaller than making the levels smaller and more dense with content?

[tom]

Why not start every character with 2 deep descent scrolls? That would also fix an issue (for me) that identifying the first deep descent scroll you find forces you to skip part of the early game, and in some race/class combos I don't want to.