Making the game harder

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Instead of adding new monsters, maybe we should change the monster density (or enforce minimum levels) in these last levels. Disable deep descent, create stairs down and TL down (unless you can recall to deeper), and only have one down stairs per level. That would make descending the last 20 levels harder without adding new monsters. Each level would be like a 'quest' level, except the quest is 'find the stairs'.

Some of these also dovetail with the general concepts to make things harder...so we could go a step further, and just say remove Deep Descent and Create Stairs *altogether*, and make Teleport Level only go UP...never down. Then, the only thing to change in level creation is to adjust the # of stairs down. I'd throw in 1 other aspect: if there's only 1 down stairway, it shouldn't be in a vault. ESPECIALLY if all other means of going down, are removed.

And I might even extend the idea: no more than 2 stairs down, starting at DL 51.

For monsters that appear...how about a general minimum-depth algorithm? No monster can ever appear more then 30, maybe 40 levels deeper than its base...period. I know they're uncommon now, but they occasionally pop. Also, I dunno the algorithm, but you could force the monsters to be more depth-focused with a loop like this:

do while (true) {
monster = buildRandomMonster();
float chance = (thisDLevel.depth - monster.baseDepth ) / 30;
if (chance <= RandomNum()) break;
}

So there's only a 1 in 6 chance that a monster from 25 levels higher, will actually appear. Uniques might need separate consideration. But hey, DL 70 is now gonna be dominated by DL 55+ critters...nothing is gonna be a cakewalk. DL 95 is gonna be nothing but the few, nasty, tough beasties...and if you haven't been clearing out uniques, you're probably gonna get a LOT of them as well.

[Magnate]

Are you talking about creating "difficulty levels"? I vote against that.

I don't think "reduce tedium" and "reduce turncount" are even related. You could have fun with char that does multi-million turn wins if the main dungeon is interesting. Exploring can be fun. Cracking vaults can be challenging. Knowing everything the level can offer after one turn (enter level, cast clairvoyance/activate Palantir, "[") is boring.

Problem with "tedium" is that there is too much to do before final fight that is just matter of patience: Consumables to collect, uniques with nasty escorts to kill, gear to find. We should have some faster, but more risky, way of doing all that. Especially that consumables collection.

There should be less "blend into general mass" items. We should have items that are "unbalanced" but very rare in comparison to others. Items that make last fight laughably easy *if* you find them. Artifact consumables. Potions of invulnerability. Making every single item usable at any situation makes them all boring. Availability of many items in shops should be reduced for many things. Like arrows, bolts and shots. Versatility, not equality. Make items and things good at one thing and and crappy at others. Make it difficult to find right combination. Force them to make hard choices.

I agree with Timo: reducing tedium does not equal reducing turncount. I am definitely with increasing consumables, I think that's fairly uncontroversial. I'm happy with unbalanced but very rare items (I would say that!), and with reducing anything to do with the town and forcing hard choices. I don't share the view that making things useful makes them boring, but otherwise I'm pretty much with all this.

I also agree with Eddie that quite a big chunk of the game becoming "easier" results from the *removal* of tedium e.g. note-taking. Much of the UI improvement has resulted in more info being available to the player, and I don't have a problem with that - I would not support a return to tedium and note-taking. That said, I would support some deliberate changes like cutting down ESP etc.

Personally I just don't think the game is fundamentally broken - I don't think it needs any radical goals. I used to be a big fan of removing levels 60-98, but I'm not even bothered about that any more.

[PowerDiver]

I also agree with Eddie that quite a big chunk of the game becoming "easier" results from the *removal* of tedium e.g. note-taking.

I didn't think I said that. Removing note-taking just makes it less tedious for those of us who push hard enough that such information is required. I'm opposed to adding tedium as a proxy for making the game harder.

All of the UI and ID-by-use changes together do not compare to any of

improved CLW
quiver
branding rings
improved artifacts
exacerbated game of shopping effects

[Derakon]

Tiburon: removing Deep Descent, existence of staircases, etc. has one major problem: if the current dungeon level the player is at is boring (in a "nothing can seriously challenge me and there's no good loot here" sense), then he has no good methods for rapidly getting deeper to reach dungeon levels that are interesting. There's several race/class combinations that want to skip basically 500-1500' in the current design -- even though other race/class combinations need to traverse those same levels carefully! But then there are characters that, once they get to 1800', need to stop and power up for a while, and others that are then clear to dive straight to 3500'. Difficulty as a function of dungeon depth does not monotonically increase, in other words.

So basically, is it worth forcing some characters to slog through uninteresting levels just so we can keep them from skipping ones that would be interesting if they just bothered to play them?

[Nick]

For monsters that appear...how about a general minimum-depth algorithm?

Oangband has this, and IMHO it works very well. For example, at DL30, chance of a monster appearing is divided by 4 if it's from DL < 20, and then again if it's from DL < 10.

Simple change, brings precisely the desired effect. Just do it.

EDIT: /me remembers he has commit access

[kaypy]

There is a problem with no shallow level critters at deep dungeon levels, as I brought up in the item generation thread:
Everything native to L50 or below has drop_good. No consumable types are considered good. There is a whole range of deep consumables that you can only get by scumming the floor drops or killing reverse-out-of-depth critters who have the potential for consumable drops...
"Great Wyrm? Nah, whats he going to have- another X of Westernese?... Ooh, some snagas- now *they* might have something good!"

[ramela]

I also thing a hard decision needs to be made about the number of levels in Angband. There are barely any new monsters after 3500'. I know 100 is a nice, round number, but the monster and object list seems to be set up for about 80 levels. Either that, or we need around 100 or so higher level monsters for levels 3500'-3800'

Maybe we should try a dungeon compression scheme of some kind.

Maybe compress like so: (into 50 levels)

levels 1-30 to levels 1-10

levels 31-70 to levels 11-40

levels 71-100 to levels 41-50

or: (for 75 dungeon levels)

levels 1-30 to levels 1-20

levels 31-70 to levels 21-60

levels 71-100 to levels 61-75

or something. (I just randomly made up those level schemes.)

Compress the boring/too easy levels.

[Timo Pietilä]

I also thing a hard decision needs to be made about the number of levels in Angband. There are barely any new monsters after 3500'. I know 100 is a nice, round number, but the monster and object list seems to be set up for about 80 levels. Either that, or we need around 100 or so higher level monsters for levels 3500'-3800'

Just remake monster distribution if you want to have new monsters between 3500 - 5000. That's it.

Amount of levels is no problem. Problem is that there is practically no increase in danger after 3000 to 5000 and rewards are much greater in 4000+ levels just because RoS is native there. Speed means a lot. Those levels between 3000 - 4000 are not very boring, but everyone dives trough them to get to RoS depth ASAP. If we move stat-gain deeper to about 2000' and entire first half to be 0-3500' instead of 0-2500' then that boring part pretty much disappears.

In angband there are actually two games: first half is developing your char: you gain important spells, HP, clvl:s and absolutely vital abilities, second half is unique hunt and tuning your gear for final fight. If we stretch that first half a bit longer game stays more interesting a lot longer.

I find that unique hunt part of game boring. At that point choosing your fights is piece of cake and no amount of non-unique monsters can make it any more dangerous, and more uniques just makes hunt longer.

[TJS]

I've mentioned this before, but speed it way too powerful with no drawbacks at all. The last couple of games I've found an early ring or boots of speed and got down to level 98 with no difficulty whatsoever, without really paying much attention to what I was doing.

Being faster your character should make more noise moving about and your stealth should suffer a lot. Also you would have less time to do things as effectively, so your to-hit value should suffer as should your spell failure rate. You want 0% failure rate? Then you're going to have to take off those boots of speed. Fair trade off in my opinion.

ESP also makes the game so much easier as well.

[Timo Pietilä]

I've mentioned this before, but speed it way too powerful with no drawbacks at all.

It is powerful, but it should be. Angband has several monsters that benefit from being fast too, and if they get just one double move using right attack form you are toast. Like Tarrasque with disenchantment breath. Even with resist it still can do about 850 points of damage with double move.

Being faster your character should make more noise moving about and your stealth should suffer a lot. Also you would have less time to do things as effectively, so your to-hit value should suffer as should your spell failure rate

I see speed as time tampering. Everything else slows down, because everything in you speeds up. So no penalty because you don't do anything different way. Almost opposite way around, if you drop something with three times the speed you have three times the time to catch it mid-air before it makes a noise. You have time to avoid obstacles and move silently.

I have sometimes dreamed about being an orc and getting slowed by already three times as fast as I am "adventurer". The horror of seeing some blurry metallic blade flailing nightmare moving like a dream among my buddies and murdering them (and also dreams with opposite pov, the feeling of omnipotence with that much speed is overwhelming)

[Hariolor]

Not sure how easy this would be to implement, but I'm thinking speed could be nicely nerfed by reducing the cost to move about the dungeon, but not increasing the rate of attack or object usage. eg:

Character with normal speed and 1 blow/round may either move once, or attack once in a turn.

Character with +20 speed and 1 blow/round may take maybe five steps per turn, but still can only quaff one potion or take one attack, etc.

Basically, make speed work more like in D&D-type games, where it literally represents rate of travel, rather than flash-like ability to do everything quickly. For monsters that are currently very fast and are supposed to hit hard, it should be fairly trivial to double or triple the number of attacks they get per round as a compensating factor, if desired.

I feel like an eventual move to fractional blows may make this all much easier...or not...

[Derakon]

I believe Scthangband split out movement speed and attack speed much like you describe. It's been years since I played it though, so I can't remember how well it worked.

Anything that messes with how speed works is going to require completely re-doing the monster list, though.

[nppangband]

I believe Scthangband split out movement speed and attack speed much like you describe. It's been years since I played it though, so I can't remember how well it worked.

Anything that messes with how speed works is going to require completely re-doing the monster list, though.

NPP has that feature. Only a couple lines of code have to be changed.

[nppangband]

Just remake monster distribution if you want to have new monsters between 3500 - 5000. That's it.

Actually, the object and artifact list neds to be changed a little bit too, so the drops are appropriate for the monsters killed.

But in practice both the monster and object lists can just have their depth increased by 10% and things would be better spaced.

[miyazaki]

I'd like to see more packs of monsters in the deeper levels. Make the groupings make sense: great Wyrms in pairs with a few ancients and babies. Like a family or nest. Ranger chieftains with ranger and novices together. Groups of knights templer. The other thing would be to add a feature where monsters wake up others in their group.

Pits seem so artificial to me, having all those monsters squished a rectangle. It would be nice to see more realistic groups. FAngband has done some of this.