Making the game harder

[Bandobras]

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'd be OK with scrolls not stocked in stores, just as with !Enlightment, but not with low or medium level rods and spells.

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.

Cool, so while we are at it, why not reveal all objects in any vault (and pit, if pits start having objects)? Let's tempt the experienced player and let the newbies have a peek at the wondrous objects they won't be able see otherwise anywhere for many months to come.

[ewert]

How about 1% per dlvl chance of level having a vault ... Though tbh a level feeling for vaults would suffice, then you'd still need to find it and without proper detection you could really get into an iffy situation?

Nothing is more boring than a pitless, vaultless level.

[TJS]

How's about having more monsters per level and a greater chance of out of depth monsters being generated? Also no new monsters have been added for a while so perhaps some nasty new types can be added. Or make some current monsters a bit more difficult to deal with.

I prefer this idea than making useful items less useful again, which leads to much more boring games sorting through loads of rubbish.

[Timo Pietilä]

How's about having more monsters per level and a greater chance of out of depth monsters being generated? Also no new monsters have been added for a while so perhaps some nasty new types can be added. Or make some current monsters a bit more difficult to deal with.

I prefer this idea than making useful items less useful again, which leads to much more boring games sorting through loads of rubbish.

One of the things that made early versions harder was detection and information restrictions "fog of war". Monsters can always be avoided, no matter how "hard" you make them. If you make them hard enough people just slow down their game until they are ready to deal with them.

So: detection/enlightement reveals monsters and items, but unless you have LoS you can't figure out what those items are. ESP shows monsters, but monster list lists only monsters you have LoS to. You can't "look" monsters out of your LoS. Not even monsters revealed by ESP. Remove monster health bar. If you want to know if monster is about to die or not use probing. Restore uniques back to original colors so that there is a slight mystery if this or that monster is in fact unique or not until you actually see it.

That should make game harder, without making it more boring or slower.

[TJS]

One of the things that made early versions harder was detection and information restrictions "fog of war". Monsters can always be avoided, no matter how "hard" you make them. If you make them hard enough people just slow down their game until they are ready to deal with them.

So: detection/enlightement reveals monsters and items, but unless you have LoS you can't figure out what those items are. ESP shows monsters, but monster list lists only monsters you have LoS to. You can't "look" monsters out of your LoS. Not even monsters revealed by ESP. Remove monster health bar. If you want to know if monster is about to die or not use probing. Restore uniques back to original colors so that there is a slight mystery if this or that monster is in fact unique or not until you actually see it.

That should make game harder, without making it more boring or slower.

I like all those ideas except perhaps the monster health bar. If a monster is in line of sight you should have some information about its health even if it is only 'unharmed' or 'almost dead' etc.

The only trouble with not being able to look at things outside your los is what would people playing with tiles see when they detect? Also it would be good to have some look information still such as 'This is a dragon of indeterminate type'.

[kaypy]

Another tweak you could make to ESP is to randomize its output more. So each turn you may have 1/5 chance of picking up each smart critter, 1/10 for regular monsters, and 1/15 for wierd minds. (adjust numbers to taste). This could also fit in well with ESP being more effective closer to the player as well, just add a distance factor into the probability.

The result here would be that sure ESP will pick up everything if you watch long enough and average the results, but you cant be *sure* you've seen everything, and if you wait too long, then the thing you haven't seen may be the one that burst around the corner, spells blazing...

Oh, also on difficulty, any variables that can be a tunable value rather than an on/off setting would be nice- as an example, there have been discussions about nerfing selling and scaling up the availability of gold instead. The amount by which the gold drops are scaled up (or down, if you aren't quite at the 'turn off stores' state...) would be a good analogue rather than on/off setting.

[andrewdoull]

I guess its always worth bringing up the 'rebalanced' monster list I suggested previously.

And compressing levels 30 - 100 into 30-60, for more out of depth fun.

Andrew

[the Invisible Stalker]

I think the best way to make the game harder is to make the monsters less stupid. At a minimum they should do some sort of simple calculation to see whether they have any chance to kill you, and then flee rather than attack if they don't. Ideally they should also be cleverer in choosing between melee and ranged attacks.

[Timo Pietilä]

I guess its always worth bringing up the 'rebalanced' monster list I suggested previously.

Where?

I have also thought of using "junk" to mask monsters. Make skeletons and golems "mimics", so that when you detect skeleton, it can be either just junk or it can be undead skeleton. Golems could be statues. That sort of things.

[buzzkill]

I think the best way to make the game harder is to make the monsters less stupid. At a minimum they should do some sort of simple calculation to see whether they have any chance to kill you, and then flee rather than attack if they don't. Ideally they should also be cleverer in choosing between melee and ranged attacks.

I have also thought of using "junk" to mask monsters. Make skeletons and golems "mimics", so that when you detect skeleton, it can be either just junk or it can be undead skeleton. Golems could be statues. That sort of things.

Both good ideas, and I feel that they would add needed flavor as well.

If I can expand upon the AI tweak a little. It might be fun to add another condition for monsters. Weak enemies could become (naturally) permanently feared, meaning that the monster will do all it can to break LOS and escape, seeking out stairs, if possible, so it can exit the level.

[RogerN]

Maybe I've been playing too much DoomRL. I think that instead of making the vanilla game harder it would be preferable to add optional challenges to keep vets interested. Then newbies aren't turned off, and vets can still go for the glory of winning with an artifact-less, ego-less halfling warrior using only 10 inventory slots.

[Ycombinator]

I agree that V can be made more challenging. But this should not mean "now you lose 9 characters out of 10, tomorrow you'll be losing 99 out of 100." Don't reward dumb luck and robotic concentration more than they're already rewarded.

Better pathfinding — great. Monsters banging their heads against the wall instead of walking around the corner often look really stupid. But with current monster density this will make stealth way too important.
btw, is there "battle noise" in Angband? IMO "...grunts with pain", "...shrieks in agony" should generate certain amount of noise.
It looks like there is more or less universal agreement that "smart" spellcasting and monster mana is the way to go. I am all for it.

A few crazy ideas about ESP:
Telepathy shows only generic monster symbol. You have to be skilled in reading minds of the specific race to identify monsters precisely with telepathy. You can concentrate on specific monster to identify it anyway but this will aggravate it immediately ("someone is focusing on my mind!"). @ is proficient in reading minds of his kindred, i.e. humans know all about 'p', elves and dwarves — 'h', half-orcs — 'o', etc.

Another thing: we're deep into variants territory with this, but if you're going to make killing Morgoth much harder, add quests. Make intermediate achievements more interesting than raw numbers.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

To expand Timo's 'fog of war' and Ycomb's notion on ESP...

One option to change, but not remove, treasure detection would be that you only get a high-level item type; you don't get Long Sword, you just get Melee Weapon, and so on for the other item types, for items that aren't in LOS. A nice aspect here is, this is probably a simple adjustment.

And I'm not sure I mentioned this before...someone suggested that Destruction destroy un-ID'd artifacts. I don't like that, unless it's implemented as 'remove from level'...leaving the door open that they could be recreated later. How about, instead of destroying them, they get randomly teleported to somewhere else in the dungeon? And I'd apply this to ALL artifacts, not just un-ID'd. Also, the message text should be made consistent; it shouldn't be immediately evident that the long sword of gondolin was destroyed, but Ringil, right next to it, got teleported.

[nppangband]

Just a suggestion: While there are lots of good ideas here, I am wondering if the maintainers have come up with a goal of what they want Angband to be, and then filter through the suggesions that accomplish that goal. Should Angband be longer or shorter, easier or harder, better ui, more race/class variety, simpler or more complicated? I know there is an active maintainer group, but have they agreed on 2-3 goals of what all the changes in Angband are working towards?

There have been alot of great changes in the last couple years, BTW, both in gameplay and in the code organization, which is why I will be spenging practically every minute of free time I have in the next couple months getting NPP caught up with the current vanilla source. The only thing I don't see is an overall theme of where it is all going. Gameplay seems to be headed in a couple different directions at once.

[Derakon]

I do like Timo's suggestion that detection/ESP not reveal the exact monster type. I suggest that everything you "see" that's not in LOS be rendered in grayscale and described with generic terms when you 'l'ook at it. The suggestion that ESP simply detect the existence of creatures instead of what type they are is also a good one. We could bring back the old & symbol to represent unknown creatures that aren't in LOS.

As for revealing items in vaults on entering the level: I'm opposed to this largely because it makes the risk/reward calculation for cracking the vault too easy. This is also why I think the abundance of object detection in modern Vanilla is not such a great thing. Being able to easily see what's on the ground makes it too easy to know that you don't need to go anywhere near that big pile of monsters.