Making the game harder

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Atarlost: newbies are going to be hooked, or not, based on what happens in the first 20 dlvls. That said, tho, it is true that the suggestions from the jaded vets (in any game) do have to be considered with a grain of salt. The vets' complete knowledge of virtually everything, creates a bias. They're thinking, "well in order to make the game hard *for me*..." and not necessarily considering how that will affect the more casual player. Streamlining the UI is another way you can avoid repelling newbies. One of the suggestions (getting rid of the 18/XXX ability score notation, whether you change the actual tables underlying the mechanics much or not) is very much in this area.

I remember the term frog-knows...but I never played it. Started with 2.7.9. 3.1.2 is definitely easier overall, but IMO the improvements to ease of play, are MUCH greater than the reduction in difficulty...except maybe for bow damage. I don't remember using bows that much in Oldband.

On Derakon's posts about magic...

*THE* most important aspect of magic is the ability to dictate the fight happening on YOUR terms. That means detection, TO effects, Destruction effects, Banish/Mass Banish...these are the game-changers. It also means that regeneration, particularly mana regeneration, is hugely important as a facilitator. The fact that you can buff nicely does help, sure, but it's gilding the lily IMO. For the most part, the damage spells are frequently the least effective use for your mana. So my suggestion would be to reduce the impact of the Battlefield Controller magics, while potentially *increasing* the effect of damage magic.

[fyonn]

I think that it's not right that spell casters play much of the mid and end game as warriors with some extra spells, and their abilities near match those of pure warriors. Should they not rely on magic much more for attack? I'd support making their magic attacks more powerful and counter it by perhaps reducing their max blows down from a max of 4 to maybe 2. yes they should be able to fight, but they shouldn't be able to hold a candle to a warrior in pure melee. I might even think of raising a warrior's max blows too?

I've already suggested on another thread making priest uncomfortable using sharp missile weapons such as bows and xbows and making them use slings. and increasing the penalty for using sharps too. I do think that priests would be better warriors than mages, but again, not as good as pure warriors.

dave

[ChodTheWacko]

You can consider me a 'jaded vet', even though I last won the game when it was Moria (I think). It was way back when Mages had GoI, anyway.

Moria/Angband hasn't fundimentally changed since then, and I think it's fine if newbies have a real nasty time winning the game. They can always savescum. Back in college loads of people played roguelikes and they were all hard hard hard. It's refreshing to have a game you have to bust your ass to win. Also I still stand on my soapbox that we could have a 'harder difficulty' option that doesn't mean Ironman, which could enable any/all of the suggestions below:

It would be interesting for the vets to discuss how the game was harder before and to see if any of that should be incorporated back into the game.

My thoughts:

1) Angband has always been a game of inventory management.
The more inventory slots you have, the more useful equipment you can carry and the easier it is for you to handle any given situation(s).

I think the quiver makes that MUCH easier. Back in 'the day', sure you might find some holy might arrows, but not necessarily a lot. And you'd have to cough up an inventory slot to have them available, and that's a big decision to make. I don't recall if rangers had extra shots back then, but you couldn't carry nearly as many deadly arrows till you got Tensers.

Also now that ID is signifigantly easier, it somewhat frees up the need to carry ID, which also frees up an inventory slot.

I don't believe in Moria we had such easy access to permanent light, which means you had to carry oil/extra torches, which again ate an inventory slot.

If you can't tell, I'm suggesting we cut a few of the inventory slots and/or the quiver.

2) Useful items are just way too easy to get.
I mean, I just bought some boots of speed from the armor store. +7 for 50K I think? Back in the day, finding boots of speed was like..... winning the damn lottery. And finding a defender weapon made you want to throw a party. Now you find them all over the place - it doesn't even feel special anymore.

You should not be able to buy ego items from any store, imho.

Angband would be much more interesting if say, item creation depths were maybe 10 levels below what they are now. Force you to take on red dragons without fire protection for a while. Right now you might as well get rid of baby dragons.

3) Detection is a bit out of control.
Being able to cast object detection spells, then say, 'oh, there's the phial there', and then just sneak on over and get it - that's practically cheating.
Detect monsters is still necessary, of course, but object detection (especially now that we have rods!) is just too generous.

4) imho, rods are a bit too generous, especially now that they stack and they all quick recharge the 'top item'. wands are fine since they have limited charges.

5) Right now, it's not particularly hard to find a couple of speed items to bump you up to +10. Before, when it was just +1, +2, speed was very rare.
Finding a ring of speed +3 is actually very useful since it lets you carry more stuff without getting slowed. I don't recall how it worked before though.
I wouldn't mind seeing speed items become more rare.

6) Telepathy sure seems a lot easier to get now.


I'm all in favor of making the game smoother and easier to play.
The above things, although I'm not saying they should be removed, are all things that made me blink and say, 'wow, that sure made things easier'.


- Frank

[fizzix]

Here are my 'make the game harder' suggestions.

1: Fix the bug that causes ammo to be protected from element damage if it's in the quiver
2: Reduce damage to archery. In my most recent game where archery damage was reduced by forcing all missiles to have +0 to-dam, archery is still viable. 'nerfy' on ladder.
3: Create archery penalty for attacking adjacent squares.
4: Create to-hit penalty for attempting to hit (with archery or melee) an invisible or unseen opponent (including those only known by telep)
5: Remove trick shots. If you can't aim at the square, you can't hit it.
6: Fix monster group AI so that they don't treat special rooms (like moated rooms) as empty rooms. This is a bug IMO.
7: Remove some of the 'useless' spells from the highest level uniques and monsters. Things like confuse,scare,paralyze. If needed, reduce the spell casting frequency. Alternatively, replace with a single spell that attempts all of 'confuse + scare + paralyze + blind.' Something like brain smashing, but without the damage.
8: Introduce sound (can steal from DJA) and make full detection come later.
9: Make monsters more likely to use a distance attack (if available) if they are just hit with a distance attack. And more likely to advance if they are not hit. Just a small tweak is probably enough.
10: Make it more likely that more desirable items and consumables are dropped by deadlier monsters. It's harder to kill a gelugon than an orc pit, the reward should be more. IMO this is a big problem with consumables.
11: Go back to where dropped item level is based on both dlevel and monster level.

@Derakon, I have not found that I have all holes covered. I'm usually missing something severe deep in the dungeon. Maybe it's because I play almost exclusively with randarts.
@Magnate, detection *is* too powerful. Although, I'm loath to just reduce it as is because it'll make the early levels harder and may not affect the later levels. We want to make the later levels harder. Adding sound or proto-sound will allow us to reduce detection early.
@Powerdiver, yes it's too easy with a warrior and no ASCs, mainly because of archery.

[buzzkill]

My 2 cents. I think that a lot of the things being discussed in this thread fall well within variant territory. At the same time I feel that Vanilla is too easy, not that I've ever won, but because I see winners posted daily and in every single competition. I'm not even particularly inspired to win (and rarely play vanilla) because beating it seems so common place. Prior to stumbling onto this community, my rogue-like experience consisted primarily of old-school rogue, which I also never won, but IIRC was a lot harder just to do well, and I don't recall insta-death enemies. Maybe I'm expecting the wrong things from V, I'm certainly not an expert.

EDIT : I do like most of fizzix's suggestions. they would make the game harder without fundamentally changing it. The trick shot could be addressed my adding an extra to hit roll. Since the standard legal hockey stick is 1x2, then any trick shot that violates that limit would be subject to an additional chance to-miss, assuming the normal to-hit roll is successful (due to the thin target area). A 1x4 hockey stick would be subject to an additional 50% chance to miss. A 1x8, 75%, and so on. You can adjust the numbers, but I think it's solid.

EDIT again: ELIMINATE stair/town scumming. If playing with connected stairs, then up staircases take you up 5 levels. Start populating level 1-10 with monsters based on some percentage of the maximum depth reached, not character level.

[fizzix]

oh, I forgot to include this:

12: Make TL and create stairs always go up
13: after dlevel 50 create only 1 down stairs per level. (multiple up stairs are ok) Make it a challenge to get to the bottom.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I think the point of separating monster detection from object detection is interesting. It definitely helps to know what's where; indeed, from the comments made by the power divers, their fundamental model is to seek out the strong, deep-level gear while NOT fighting things they don't want to fight. OK, we all do that, but their list of Monsters To Avoid tends to be considerably larger than someone who drops more gradually.

So, one suggestion along these lines: Detect Treasure becomes limited to 1 object or object type per casting. The definition of 'object type' is of interest; I don't necessarily mean it in the usual sense. It could be functional...for example, "Stat Boosters" might include all stat-boosting potions, all the +1/-1 mushrooms, and all rings and amulets that give a stat bonus, as their only function...no, it wouldn't find a Ring of Power, even tho it has stat boosting. We have a need for the ability to find specific items like "anything giving me Recall, PLEASE!!" when one has just lost the last WoR scroll. And I wouldn't want things to be *too* narrow, so while the proper scope and range of "object types" would be a bit tricky to define, I think it would be worthwhile.

Oh, and one could leave the rare !*Enlightenment* to behave as it does now.

Another specific suggestion to deal with the major aspects of Controller Magic: for all Teleport Other-class effects, and Banish/Mass Banish, one of the HUGE advantages is, they *always* work. Get rid of that. Every monster in the area of effect has a percentage chance to be teleported away or removed; this chance ==

120% + (1% per caster level) - (1% per monster level)

In addition, uniques remain immune to banish, and are treated as being from 10 levels deeper to avoid being TOd.

So anything shallow (<=20th level) is automatically affected, while you only have a 10% chance to TO Morgoth.

I am certainly amenable to other formulas; I think the key is to eliminate the absolute certainty it'll work. If we decide to use whatever formula Rift uses to detemine whether the critter gets moved, that'd probably be fine too. I like the structure of the formula I gave; it respects both character power and monster power. If you want to throw in Nexus resistance as an additional factor...fine with me.

EDIT: Rift might not be the best model, because Rift is always a single target, I believe. All the other TO effects are at least beam.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Subthread: Most Worrisome Monsters

Combat is, let's face it, at the heart of this game. Therefore, in order to properly assess difficulty, we need to identify those monsters/situations that are either particularly easy (situations, mostly) OR that pose significant risk of either killing us, or forcing us off the current level. Note that, as I noted before, this isn't the same as the monsters we don't fight, given a choice; there's overlap, certainly, but they aren't the same. To give one example: fighting a bone golem just isn't worth it. Tough to kill, no reward, touch to disenchant which we hate.

Also note that, for the most part, I'm focusing on ability types, rather than specific monsters, because the goal is to identify general principles.

So, that said, my list looks like this:

1. Summoners, summoners, summoners!!! IMO, by FAR the most risky. The fact that we've devised the elaborate anti-summoner strategy doesn't weaken the case here; IMO it proves the point.

2. Tunnelers. This might surprise you, but a tunneler can often be, effectively, a weak form of summoner, by letting many more monsters converge on you.

3. PACK breathers. I rate pack breathers worse, overall, than solitary breathers like even a drolem.

4. Repositioners...blink dogs, phase spiders, gravity hounds, nexus hounds, anything with Teleport To Me. Being yanked out of position frequently increases your risk exposure to a very high degree.

5. BIG breathers...great wyrms, balrogs, drolems, Tarrasque, etc.

6. Anything with unresistable damage, or something that targets a resist that's fairly uncommon (disenchant and chaos, mostly)

7. Ethereal monsters. They can surround you and remain in rock, making your retaliatory options very limited. They can chase extremely effectively as well. Unlike a tunneler, tho, they can't bring along a lot of friends.

8. This becomes situation-specific, but any monster that has an attack which forces you to take a healing action to counter its effect, IMMEDIATELY. This is situational because the special effects are also negated by the right resistance right now.

As far as situations, there's 2 cases: situations you create, and situations created by the dungeon layout. As I noted before, *for the most part* and barring summoners, you can go one on one with most monsters reasonably safely. The risk is when you have to face multiple monsters, many of whom can attack. That's why I rate pack breathers as such a high risk. I should also add monsters with ball effects, because they also gain the indirect-fire advantage.

So: you're at highest risk when in a large, open room against multiple ranged attackers. You're at lowest risk when you can isolate and separate, OR when you're fighting a single foe and you have room to maneuver...we all love PD and shoot, right?

So, rooms that are to the character's advantage:

--checkerboard rooms, because you can use the pillars to break lots of LOS, while using ball spells to hit multiple foes.

--vaults with LOTS of permanent rock, breaking the vault up into multiple discrete parts...you never have to fight *too* many things at once, and you usually have lines of retreat. It also blocks both tunnelers and ethereals.

Rooms that are very dangerous:

--the big, very open greater vault, because of the huge monster concentration which includes far too many medium-threat monsters.

--Any large room *can* be risky if you're caught in the middle and the wrong things start showing up.

I don't consider most pits dangerous, because you can use the moat to your advantage. The risk with something like a giant pit is all the monsters with Teleport To Me; with an undead pit, the simple fact that you've got so many monsters that are VERY tough individually.

EDIT: NOTE that I didn't count speed. Obviously, faster monsters are more risky than slower monsters, but speed is like salt; it's less of a risk in itself, as it's a factor that enhances risk, like salt enhances other flavors. I'll still usually prefer to take out a summoner at normal speed, in preference to most melee-only attackers at +10 speed, even if the melee guy's on top of me.

Also, the point of this exercise is to identify the areas where difficulty can be improved. Note that most of the monsters I've mentioned focus on my ability to control the battlefield.

[will_asher]

take all my comments with a grain of salt (even though I'm hardly a veteran) because I rarely play vanilla anymore and don't know the newest versions of it as well.

* Immediate tactical challenges. These are what you face when you're in fights in the dungeon. You can make them harder by making monsters stronger or more common, or by making the player weaker. Things like removing extra blows/shots from players, increasing the importance of armor class, making monsters smarter, etc. all fall into this category.

I think this is mostly good how it is as far as difficulty. Although undead pits are pointless because it is an automatic get off the level thing. I like having tough monsters which appear by themselves and weaker monsters in groups which isn't always the case in the late game (not like I know the late game very well).

* Short-term exploration challenges. These are for when you're exploring the dungeon but not currently in a fight. You can make them harder by making the dungeon more difficult/dangerous to explore, by limiting the player's movement capabilities, and by limiting access to information. Things like adding dangerous terrain, removing the ability to tunnel, and nerfing detection all fall into this category.

I like the idea of nerfing detection at least a little, but it would be bad to significantly nerf monster detection unless there are alternatives that work (which would end up being other forms of detection). I do kindof like the idea of anti-scrying magic for high-level monsters though. It just sounds cool.

Nerfing object detection is a good idea IMO. It should be harder to find the great items and just go after those. Hiding extra dice was a good part of this (I should do that for DJA but haven't gotten around to it). I also like the idea of making the dungeon more dangerous/interesting to explore, but that's probably variant territory. I definetly do not like the idea which some support of removing tunneling, although it would be fine to make it harder/less convenent.

* The long-term character customization challenge. This is deciding what equipment to use, what inventory to carry, what spells to learn, etc. Players are trying to find the optimal equipment loadout that protects them from dangerous attacks while giving them a strong offense of their own. Reducing overlap between equipment (so that, for example, you're exceedingly unlikely to be able to cover every resistance hole), making most items have drawbacks to their use, and reducing inventory size would all fall into this category.

I don't like the idea of making inventory management harder. I know it's a major part of the game, but IMO dealing with it is largely an annoyance more than good difficulty. Also, more inventory slots/easier management means more magic items can be useful because you have the space to carry them. This makes the game more interesting.
I don't know the late game well enough to comment about difficulty of covering resistances, although there do seem to be a lot of easy ways to get the basic 4 resistances.
Buzzkill said to remove stair/town scumming. I would be fully in favor of removing stair scumming if we could do it without having disconnected stairs (which I'm sure we can).
EDIT: I should have mentioned that I'm okay with Buzzkill's idea of up stairs taking you 5 levels up. Although that's not really having connected stairs.

Town scumming is tougher. IMO, If we get rid of it, then we'd need to have more stuff that always available in town: restore and healing potions, that kind of thing (and more WoR than is currently garanteed in the general store. I am just not comfortable going deep in the dungeon with only 2 or 3 recall scrolls.).

I'm also in favor (as I mentioned elseware) of having harder/easier skill levels, so that several of these things would only happen if the harder skill level was on. failure rate on teleother and banishment sounds cool, but only if its an option or connected to a harder skill level.

[miyazaki]

Ways to make the game harder and better:

1. Nerf archery/make quiver acid/fire susceptible/disallow firing missiles at adjacent monsters.

2. Make ESP monster-type specific (ala brands): demon-ESP, dragon-ESP, etc.

3. Monster detection: make it reveal monsters as grey letters with no further detail. "d" could mean anything from baby white to mature multi-hued to kavlax.

4. Make uniques susceptible to banishment.

[fyonn]

Although undead pits are pointless because it is an automatic get off the level thing.

oh, I'm supposed to avoid graveyards am I? not clear them? my mistake!

dave

[Timo Pietilä]

See, this strikes me as one of the areas that doesn't need to be made harder - the whole picking-your-fights thing. While I'm happy to have better pathfinding on principle, I think we should tone down the number of always-awake monsters,

I think we should add one more monster state: Awake, but not aware, with way better path-finding algorithm. If player has good enough stealth (increased by level as well as gear) he could sneak past any "awake but not aware" monster as long as he stays out of their LoS.

Make spawned monster start with that state.

That makes

a) stealth more important and gives more variability between classes.
b) avoiding aware monsters more difficult.

[Timo Pietilä]

I have played with this alot in NPP. There are plenty of ways to enlarge the path finding code without hurting game performance (NPP monsters move almost exclusively by path finding, and depending on the terrain there are more than a dozen different moevment flows being tracked at once). In the Vanilla environment practically the entire dungeon can be mapped without any pauses in the game. It makes the dangerous, aggressive low reward monsters like the hounds and hydras much more difficult to avoid.

There is detection range which we could shorten for hounds. Hounds especially if that change is made.

[buzzkill]

Buzzkill said to remove stair/town scumming. I would be fully in favor of removing stair scumming if we could do it without having disconnected stairs (which I'm sure we can).

I thought I covered this, but maybe I wasn't clear enough.

Up stair cases serve no purpose other than to stair scum, or to flee (and to provide connected stairs). NOBODY climbs back to town. That's why I suggested the up staircase take you up 5 levels instead of 1. It solves two problems...

1. If you stair scum, you will quickly rise through the dungeon. This will move you outside of the range of levels you want to scum. I suppose you could revert to 'normal stairs' for DL's 10 thru 1 (so the last ten levels, on your way back to town, would have to be traversed 1 at a time, as normal) so recall scumming doesn't replace stair scumming.

2. Fleeing back up the stairs you just came down shouldn't come at no cost. If you flee, there should be a penalty involved in order to make you think twice about it. In this case the penalty is you have to find 4 down staircases just to get back to where you were. (and since you're fleeing, suddenly finding yourself 5 levels higher might not be such a bad thing, at least you shouldn't be complaining about it)

Obviously, this being angband, my suggested fix is still able to be abused through the use of deep descent and multiple recalls. Despite the potential for abuse, I believe it's a step in the right direction, because it makes stair scumming much more tedious.

[Derakon]

My personal inclination is that if there's behavior we want to discourage, there has to be a better way to do it than just making it tedious. Games should never be tedious.

Besides, I don't think that stairscumming is significantly affecting the difficulty here except for those who abuse it, who shouldn't be the base case here. Basically the only time I take an up staircase is when I enter a level and am surrounded by monsters that I really don't want to deal with; the alternative in that situation is a blind teleport, which is basically strictly worse than a staircase movement. But if you take away useful staircases in that situation, I'll just use a Teleport Level instead. *shrug*