Making the game harder

[buzzkill]

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.

Something has got to give. Stair scumming and up-stairs fleeing is tempting (even for me), and because the player always gets first move on a new level, it's a behavior akin to ch**ting. I know that nobody likes the c-word, but lets face it. Save scumming is tedious, not facilitated by the game itself, and (almost) nobody is complaining. Stair scumming should follow in it's footsteps. There would still be plenty of other behaviors to engage in to bend the odds in your favor.

[Nick]

Or you could make the game so hard that you have to stairscum just to survive.

[nullfame]

Not all of these are my original ideas:

**Halve the quiver.** I used to devote 3-4 slots to as many types of ammo. Now I devote 2 slots to 10 types. That is messed up. Make 49 missiles constitute a slot. The quiver solves the stacking problem which was a total time waster before (enchanting arrows up to match pluses). Now it is too easy. Maybe 49 is still too high but a start.

Destruction removes artifacts. I rarely attempt the really big open vaults. Too dangerous especially if a shrieker is in there. I just destruct, trying to avoid an unidentified flavor or consumable I want, and damn the weapons.

Not sure how I feel about Waldern, et al being able to destroy unidentified artifacts. OT1H it is kinda spoilery (look, the row with Vargo only has one object left). OTOH it would make them more annoying than they already are. I currently seek them out to prevent destroying objects. Maybe allowing them to destroy makes the game harder?

Monsters can pick up artifacts. Why not? They carry them. Want to see what was in that vault? Kill the guy who beat you to looting it.

Teleport other includes objects. I'm not sure I like this idea but it interests me. I think I would lure monsters away from objects which just adds tedium. Just throwing an idea out there.

Storekeepers don't restock. What kind of a shopkeeper doesn't put out his full line of goods? If the business objective is to get you to buyout the store, why can I sell everything right back to them? Wouldn't you just put the only potion of restore strength in Dor Daedeloth on the shelf and make it ridiculously expensive? I know this is just a game but that just doesn't make sense. Disclaimer: I have never bought out a store in real life.

Option: restrict creation of objects

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Storekeepers don't restock hoses almost everyone, in one form or another, UNLESS you just dive, dive, dive all the time. Warriors are, of course, hosed the most, but still, I think every class needs *something* out of one of the stores on a fairly regular basis. CERTAINLY, I wouldn't support this without making healing/restoration potion drops a LOT more frequent, and even then, it would make inventory management a much bigger PITA.

Also: sure, they lay out their entire stock at one time, but who says they don't get more in? The argument by analogy doesn't hold very well.

And I think it's just the wrong role for the town shops. Their primary role, IMO, is to be a safety net, providing essentials in case the dungeon doesn't. Now, OK, this could mean we remove CCWs from the temple; make CSWs the best you can get. And, I think you can get Restore Mana from the temple; that's a combat power enhancer, letting you last a great deal longer. Make it Restore Life Levels instead; that's a tedium eliminator. And that's what the goal for the town shops should be.

[Bandobras]

Full support to buzzkill, though we have to test the solution in a variant first, obviously. I'm playing all variants with disconnected stairs for years now, because of how stair-scumming degenerates my gameplay. I don't succumb to save scumming so easily, even though I make savefile backups every few hundred turns in case I spill tea over my keyboard in exitment or fall to sleep with my head on the keyboard.

Flavoured ESP is also a great and proven idea.

I've just played V after a few years of 4GAI variants and I like it a lot. Unfortunately, detect objects ruins my mid-level gameplay. I go: Detect. Anything interesting? Try to grab. Anything got woken up? Flee. Rinse and repeat. I think it should be limited to Rogues and high-level spells/gear. At high levels even such a routine is dangerous, so it's not so failsafe and repetitive. Also, detecting objects in vaults is absolutely cool. No idea, how to reveal their objects without breaking the gameplay elsewhere, though.

About pathfinding and 4GAI, it's not only about difficulty, its about flavour --- the monsters feel much more "human" if they behave intellligently. Not being able to detect so easily also adds to the flavour, make the game less mechanical and more surprising. Though, if a have a fancy for cold, tactical game with visible board, I'd like to be able to choose a Hobbit Mage and have all detection (except objects) early and easily available and absolutely essential to the survival (again, object detection is not).

About 4GAI, it's easy to overdo it. On one hand, tt's not interesting if all monsters just constantly and inevitably flock to the player. On the other hand, it's not interesting if the behaviour is so complex that they become totally unpredicable, either. I think it's fine to have a couple of patterns of behaviour: intelligent, unintelligent, fearless, pack and just a couple of affecting factors (monster HP if not fearless, player HP if pack, monster mana and the possibility to flank the player, if intelligent). Let anything more complex emerge from the simple rules.

I really long to the frog-knows how distant days, when I actually used Sleep Monster a lot with my Hobbit Mage to fight packs of orcs, by putting the first one to sleep and casting Stinking Cloud on the rest. I've not done it for years now, because I've become a better player and it's just not advantageous. And it should be sometimes, depending on the situation. One of the problems is monsters pushing through others (I don't remember how it is in V). A bigger one is that it's so easy to lure them one by one. It's sensible for OOD vault monsters, but for a pit or a group of monsters they should always follow each other. Another problem is that there are no incentives for any but the two modes of play: tanks that just kill all the orcs on autopilot and rouges that never bother. Mages and priest come from the rogue to the tank camp as they grow powerful. (You have to play a tank at least for the final unique hunt). OK, there is an icentive: vaults, but how about a vault that is guarded not by a few very tough monsters that you can fight one a time, but which is infested with a group of not so tough monsters, which you have to tackle all at once, unless you outsmart them? At last something to do for an intelligent Mage and some use for the magic devices you've just gathered to sell.

[will_asher]

Had an idea about object detection:
objects in vaults are shielded from normal object detection, but can be detected by the 'detect enchantment' spell or a potion of *enlightenment*.

Also, it would make sense for monsters to be able to pick up artifacts, but I'm not too sure about the gameplay effects of that..

[PowerDiver]

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.

I'd like to see monster awareness change qualitatively. Monsters hearing you should be a function of the distance the sound passes through corridors, not through walls. They should only know the direction down the hall, not the player position. Monsters that follow by smell should be fooled by running in a circle and teleporting, with them continuing on the loop at least a few iterations.

[PowerDiver]

FWIW, here is a list of my self-restrictions. I don't know if it is complete. I'd like to see rune of protection changed to a circle of protection that is broken when you leave your square for any reason.


birth_money
disconnected_stairs

No spells to add dungeon features, i.e. rune or create stairs etc. Digging or stone2mud okay to get from A to B.
No destruction or massBanish in vaults.
No ranged damage at immobile spellcasters without reverse LOS, telOther okay.
No hack-and-back or ASCs.
Only shoot things I can target directly
never use satisfy hunger from a book
No using =escaping as a cheap speed ring, use for escaping only.
No resetting recall depth

Don't carry ammo that wouldn't fit in quiver, i.e. at most 10 slots of ammo

[Derakon]

I'd support getting rid of scrolls/rods of Treasure Location. They'd really slow gameplay down, mind you, but the ability to see what sectors of the map have worthwhile floor items is probably broken; certainly it facilitates the "dive to 4900'" strategy.

I think it'd be worth considering revealing at least the walls of vaults as soon as you enter the level, too. Make them stand out so the player is more likely to try to crack them open.

[nullfame]

Storekeepers don't restock hoses almost everyone, in one form or another... who says they don't get more in? The argument by analogy doesn't hold very well.

The title of the thread is making the game harder

I should have been more clear though: I meant no restock on buyout. Restock every 10,000 turns is an important safety net. It's buying out the alchemist 4 times while standing in the store that doesn't make sense. She brings out new stock and is like "I didn't even realize I had scrolls of recharging in the back." How does she stay in business without effective inventory management?

Sure, you could rest on dl1 to exploit the game. The RNG is trying to challenge you by not having that potion of restore dexterity readily available in town. You want to decline the challenge? Go ahead. Same applies for ASC, trick shots, stair scumming, save scumming, you name it.

[Derakon]

Ultimately I think that changes to the way stores work will fall under "streamlining", not "challenge increase". We'll probably end up moving to a fixed, unlimited inventory for several of the stores, if not all of them (black market might be a fixed limited inventory). The "challenge" of going into the dungeon with drained stats or an inadequate loadout is, I would wager, not one most players find interesting.

[Pete Mack]

The title of the thread is making the game harder

I should have been more clear though: I meant no restock on buyout. Restock every 10,000 turns is an important safety net. It's buying out the alchemist 4 times while standing in the store that doesn't make sense.

Sure, you could rest on dl1 to exploit the game. The RNG is trying to challenge you by not having that potion of restore dexterity readily available in town. You want to decline the challenge? Go ahead. Same applies for ASC, trick shots, stair scumming, save scumming, you name it.

If you can rest at dl 1, why not allow buying out the store? It's nearly the only thing gold is good for.

[Atarlost]

Expectations have changed. People are no longer after Nintendo Hard. Most people now want games that relieve stress rather than create it.

[ewert]

What he said ... I play for fun, not for work ... Then again, personally I don't use use pillardancing or long ASC with runes or whatever (heck I squelch rune scrolls), I do kill Emperor Quguguguslzzzzburpslurp with ball spells if I have them (man hunting it down as warrior is annoying =P), I don't buy out stores because personally I don't care about turn count so I rest at dlvl1 (please, a buy-out button? it's annoying and boring to rest... or just make some more things guaranteed like stat restores) etc...

[Tiburon Silverflame]

OK...I definitely agree with no restock on buyout, but restock at fixed intervals.

I also agree with going with the fixed inventory for most of the stores, because...yeah, you can go to DL 1 to rest for 10K turns when the alchemist doesn't have that !RestInt you're desperate for, but that's so pointless, IMO. Since the stores *will* eventually have them, requiring that approach only promotes tedium, it doesn't make the game easier or harder.