An idea to alleviate Rangers LOS abuse

[Grotug]

[snip]

The old game as a whole is harder to win than the new version, if anyone is wondering. Whatever increase in difficulty has been achieved by nerfing TO is, in my opinion, the "a rock falls on your head - you die" kind of difficulty.

What I meant to say was: How are older versions harder to win, if they are in so many ways easier as Sky points out?

[Estie]

I didnt miss the question; I am just not entirely sure myself.

One aspect is streamlining. The squelch option for example removes many useless clicks, no selling saves a lot of time and there are other things that have been made smarter and less cumbersome.

Then there is the quality of items found. Whatever the change was that prevented fire resist armors from spawning past a certain level, that change also vastly increased the average quality of items at depth. So while the same good stuff exists, it takes longer to find.

Also there is play style: what are you optimizing ?
For example, lets say you are a ranger who starts with a sling and shortbow in 3.0.9b. As you dive deeper, if you dont find an exceptional bow, you have the option to spend your money on enchant weapon scrolls and enchant a longbow. Doing that takes time and increases the survivability of your current @, but is very likely sub optimal if you try to maximize wins/time played: for that, you just dive till you either find a good bow or die.
The old game steers you towards maximizing your win percentage, thus games take longer, while the new game favours wins/time ratio by default.

These are some of the things that I think make old Angband harder. In any case, I take about 2x the time to win a single game with the old version and while that doesnt necessarily mean it is harder, it is an indicator. Spending less time in danger is a substantial advantage, or so Ueli Steck says. Judge for yourself if you agree - may he rip.

[PowerDiver]

What I meant to say was: How are older versions harder to win, if they are in so many ways easier as Sky points out?

(1) Quiver. At its heart, angband is an inventory management game, and extra slots make things easier.

(2) More stuff. Potions drop in piles.

(3) Better stuff. Item generation has changed.

(4) Beefed up classes. Think of it this way. A simple 6th blow was supposed to be significant for a warrior, but even they don't get 6 with MoD. It's hard to get the estimation right, but IMO a blackguard under bloodlust felt like 7.5 blows counting free lashes and extra crits, and I didn't see the outcry against it. Other classes have been boosted as well. Warriors now get stunning effect, significant, but not enough to keep up with boosts to other classes.

(5) Danger removed. In the old days, step next to a floating eye or carrior crawler without FA and die. Not any more. There was also something done about guarantees of safety when you enter a new level, but I never paid attention to the details.

(6) Better items in stores, or maybe pricing? In whatever case, I get more useful items from stores in 4.2 compared to 3.0, and that's even after the better dungeon drops so store items have to be even better to be worth buying.

(7) Fewer annoying monsters. In old versions, Zephyr hounds were everywhere. There are fewer packs and the packs are smaller.

(8) Way more ego ammo. In 3.0 I would hoard every ego arrow. Sometimes I toss a whole quiver now, sure it can be replenished. Rangers can produce unlimited ego ammo.

(9) Debuffs are really powerful. Most wands used to be useless.

(10) Stretching here, but I think there are more vaults and/or vaults are more accessible.

[Estie]

A good list; I think (8) follows from (3), for non-rangers. As for (5) and (7), it is true for the upper half of the dungeon but, imo, the reverse for the lower half - I blame rock removing nasties and better path finding.

[Pete Mack]

The zephyr hounds may have made it harder. Primarily, they made it annoying. I'd like a variant with the mob size mod and the ID/squelch changes only. Everything else from 3.0...when Boots of speed were a huge find.

I rather think a bigger change is to the Elven rings: all get +5 speed, rather than the rather marginal speed bonuses in 3.0. That makes equipment management a whole lot easier.

[Grotug]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I've been thinking that it might be good to have wands of slow monster and stun monster fall off in the latter part of the game. That is, more and more monsters resisting the effect deeper into the dungeon, but have them continue to be as effective as they are now in the early part of the game. So, say, around DL40 monsters start "resisting the effect!" of slow monster and by DL90 pretty much all big, dangerous monsters completely resist the effect of slow monster. Slow and stun wands are fun to use in the early game but when you start piling on speed and the ability to slow down monsters it feels like the late game becomes not so difficult; which was a big part of the reworking of Angband, I thought; to make the end game more difficult. (that said, 600 cap on Chaos breath is definitely making the dungeon more scary).

Between all the speed items and how easily wands of slow monster are to recharge (just drop them in a store!) it's really made tougher monsters a little too easy. I dunno, there something cheesy about facing a dangerous boss-like monster and just slowing him way down while hasting yourself, so that the monster that had parity now gets one turn for every 2.5 turns you get.

I'd also like to see slow monster wands not reliably show up in the magic market so often and maybe a wider range of variety of low power items for the magic market? What about earthquake staves. They're kind of interesting and require some skill to use well. I like the early game because there seem to be lots of different ways to deal with problematic situations before reliable escapes show up. Like, I've been having a lot of fun with rings of teleportation <+2> lately. And wands of wonder are still a highlight of the early game for me when I'm struggling to find decent means of dealing damage.

I also wonder why jamming doors was removed. This seems like a fun way to buy the player some time when other escapes aren't available (like _Teleport).

Frequency of speed items probably needs to be toned down a bit. Or, let's say speed was majorly reworked so that +20 speed was difficult to attain, then you could leave slow monsters affecting all monsters, as you'd *need* it if you wound up facing Morgoth with less than +20 base speed. I don't think I like this option, though. I'd rather just see speed toned down a little bit (say 20% less frequent) and the above suggestion to the fall off on slow and stun wands efficacy.

These are just recurring thoughts I've been having with 4.2.x. Maybe I'm off the mark though.

[mrfy]

I've been thinking that it might be good to have wands of slow monster and stun monster fall off in the latter part of the game. That is, more and more monsters resisting the effect deeper into the dungeon, but have them continue to be as effective as they are now in the early part of the game. So, say, around DL40 monsters start "resisting the effect!" of slow monster and by DL90 pretty much all big, dangerous monsters completely resist the effect of slow monster. Slow and stun wands are fun to use in the early game but when you start piling on speed and the ability to slow down monsters it feels like the late game becomes not so difficult; which was a big part of the reworking of Angband, I thought; to make the end game more difficult. (that said, 600 cap on Chaos breath is definitely making the dungeon more scary).

I would not like this change. Even if I'm sped up there are plenty of high level monsters in the deep I would not want to fight without them being slowed. Great Wyrms for example.

[PowerDiver]

(11) Stat restore on level-up. I used to worry about restores, but hardly do any more. Now, in a pinch, there is a new grape jelly trick, although to be truthful I've used other drainers and never a grape jelly to restore my stats.

[Pete Mack]

Stat restore potions were sufficiently common that Stat draining was rarely an issue. The catastrophic issue was nexus breath.

[Sky]

TBH i dont remember a lot of the old game. What i do remember is,

1. Cursed and *Cursed items. "Oops - it feels deathly cold" means nine times out of 10 your character was dead.

2. Stat draining was atrocious.
I can't remember if Mushrooms of Vigour existed back then, i'm not sure they did.

3. a single potion of Speed or Healing was gold. Earth & Cold hounds were the devil.

Also back then i used to play with Standarts only so i can't say if the fractional speed bonuses existed, but with randarts now it's soo easy to find random stuff that's got a handful of "+3 Spd" bonuses on it, and before you know it you're at +15.

[Pete Mack]

There were ways to get rid of cursed weapons and armor.
There were remove curse scrolls in town, and it is green book spell.
Enchanting armor or wespons above zero will eventually break even heavybl curses.
Cursed objects (except artifacts) are destroyed by Orb.
On the plus side:
It was actually possible to use Nazgul bows for SI, as drain life on objects had negligible effect.

[PowerDiver]

(12) Level feelings. In the old days, it was an amalgamation of monsters and treasure. Now they are separated. This a huge boost of free information about which levels are most worthwhile to explore.

[Estie]

True, but only for the early game. There I leave levels with low item indication all the time. Later on, monsters and vault layouts are the predominant factor when deciding whether to stay or leave, same as it used to be.

[Sideways]

Also back then i used to play with Standarts only so i can't say if the fractional speed bonuses existed, but with randarts now it's soo easy to find random stuff that's got a handful of "+3 Spd" bonuses on it, and before you know it you're at +15.

Fractional speed bonuses were made much more common in 3.0.0, together with a load of other changes to the monster and item lists that combined to make the game much easier. Up to 2.9.x the only +speed artifacts were Ringil, Cubragol, Feanor and the four rings of power, the only +speed ego was Boots of Speed (no Elvenkind - but yes two cursed boot egos with -speed), and Rings of Speed were native to DL 80.

Also,

(13) Fractional blows. In the old days, just getting the blow count up from 1 was a huge achievement.
(14) Summoning is a lot less dangerous now.

[Nick]

(15) Blood falcons