Making the game harder

[Derakon]

I know there was a variant that had what I like to call "posses" -- groups of monsters of the same letter. I think it was ZAngband that had this. They could spice things up a bit, especially the 'p' posses, since humanoids have such a wide-ranging set of abilities.

[Hariolor]

I know there was a variant that had what I like to call "posses" -- groups of monsters of the same letter. I think it was ZAngband that had this. They could spice things up a bit, especially the 'p' posses, since humanoids have such a wide-ranging set of abilities.

It would be pretty scary indeed to run into a group of "adventurers" consisting of several high-level p and/or h.

Then again, if the risk/reward isn't there, it'd just be another hound situation where the best bet is to avoid such groups at all cost.

At least "p" and "h" seem to give useful drops at all levels.

[buzzkill]

I'm just throwing this out there for discussion. I haven't put a whole lot of thought into it.

It occurred that part of the problem that makes the game too easy is that monsters, even extremity tough ones, are very easy to avoid. This facilitates "power diving", which leads to low level characters getting superior items for their character level, so...

What is there were an XP penalty for fleeing? What I was thinking it would operate something like this.

1. If you have visible LOS on an enemy, then 1% of that enemies XP award would immediately be deducted from your current XP. This would NOT apply to enemies detected by ESP or other forms of detection, nor would it apply to sleeping monsters nor uniques (as they are designed to be tough for their native depth).

2. If you damage the monster in any way, you get that 1% back (because you at least attempted to fight it).

3. If you leave the level then the XP loss becomes a permanent (max XP drops to match current XP), unrecoverable by any means.

This should make extreme diving more costly/dangerous. Constantly fleeing from monsters that are a *lot* tougher than you will, in time, result in a substantial XP drain (esp for lower level characters). At the same time, it shouldn't greatly effect players who stay at a relatively sane depth. It's designed to make extreme diving more risky, not prohibit it. Feedback wanted.

EDIT: The plausible explanation (as requested by derakon) is that you actually diminish your combat skills, lose experience and develop a poor killing mentality, by fleeing from things. You don't lose XP by looking at monsters. You lose XP because they are looking at your backside as you cowardly run away (ESP and detection are not immediate threats). It may not effect sleepers because they pose no immediate threat. It doesn't effect uniques because there is no shame in fleeing from a unique who are usually quite powerful in-depth.

EDIT#2: and in reply to will asher... sometimes, taking the one turn to fire the arrow takes a lot of courage. If it's something worth shooting at, meaning that a 1% (XP award) drain is something to worry about, then it's probably quite deadly to you. Also, I'd like to see how it plays out when cracking a vault or a pit.... or even when confronted by a long line of nasty hounds.

[Derakon]

That seems really contrived to me. It's finding a very specific problem with the game and coming up with a very specific solution that doesn't really have any plausible explanation. Why do you lose experience for looking at monsters, but only if they're awake? Are they all Great Old Ones?

Assuming we consider powerdiving to be a problem, I'd rather find a solution that naturally makes powerdiving too dangerous to consider normally. For example: if we replace charisma with a stealth stat, and rework stealth so that monsters generally become more and more alert as you go deeper in the dungeon (and in exchange, lower stealth stats are sufficient to sneak past shallow monsters), then you'll need a higher and higher stealth stat to be able to avoid deep monsters. Young characters that dive to 4900' wouldn't have had the chance to boost their stealth enough and would find that every monster in the dungeon would be chasing them as soon as they arrived.

[Hariolor]

Making stat potions far more rare, and tying a significant portion of stat-gain to character level would discourage power diving to a large degree. While I am not yet terribly good at it (impatient), it seems the theory is to immediately dive to stat-gain, scum around for mid level artifacts, some speed, and max str + con + int/wis. Then dive to 4900 and look for the uber artifacts and final books - only then worry about charlevel.

If you can only beef up stats through gaining levels, it will force more encounters - it might still be possible to dive down and get some OoD artifacts, then go back up and level, but I'd think it'd be even riskier if it's impossible to max Con...

I know this has been posed before, and is variant bait, but I think it's a worthy consideration.

[Derakon]

Actually, I'd say that the current conventional wisdom is to dive to 1800', get absolute basics covered (fire/ice/acid/elec resistance, free action, see invisible), get, oh, 300-400 hitpoints, then dive to 4900' and scum for gear. Predicating stat gains on levelups is actually orthogonal to such a scheme, since the character continues gaining experience at more or less the same rate as they would if they stayed in shallower depths -- they kill fewer monsters, but what they kill is worth more. Actually I think such a scheme would be helpful in general as it'd reduce the total number of stat-gain potions that any character would need to find.

Honestly I don't want to completely discourage powerdiving. I think it should be a lot harder than it is now, but I also think that you should be able hack it down there with a weak character, if you're skilled. It just shouldn't be the default strategy; it should be a choice made by someone who's decided that normal play is no longer interesting.

[will_asher]

I kinda like Buzzkill's idea, but not exactly how he proposed it. We could get a lot of "That monster woke up so I'll fire an arrow at it (so I don't lose XP) and then teleport away". I'm not sure how I'd improve the idea though, and I don't know how I'd code something like that it either.
I kindof do want to discourage power diving for normal players, but I wouldn't want to make it impossible for a very good player to do. That works with Buzzkill's idea (if someone could find a way to make it work better).

I might almost have a playstyle birth option for fast diving. If it's set to off, I'd have checkpoints where you have to have killed certain unique(s) in order to go deeper. If it's turned on, I'd tweak things so I'd be very dangerous NOt to dive fast.

[garwil]

I'm a complete newbie to Angband (or any roguelike for that matter) and powerdiving goes completely against all my preconceived strategies and ideas about video gaming in general. I find that I want to hang around at "safe" dlvls until my char is at the appropriate clvl but I end up dying more frequently if I do that. Angband is the only game I've ever played where this is the case and it's also the only game I've played where it's actually feasable to do it. Perhaps there could be an option to impose clvl restrictions at certain depths and make it so that descending stairs without meeting the requirements just spawns a new level at the same depth? Obviously this is not without its problems, as it would make it necessary to go around killing everything in sight, which doesn't really meet the roleplay requirements of a rogue for example. Another alternative could be to include dlvl specific uniques that MUST be killed before you descend. Then you could sneak around as much as you want but hunting down uniques would slow the game down a bit and make the earlier depths more interesting. Just a few thoughts, apologies if they've already been discussed!

PS: I must admit, I do really like the fact that skilled players can dive to stupid depths so quickly, but I can see how it could be abused. I think if I was on a mission to kill two people in a dungeon full of monsters I'd wanna get down to the bottom as quick as possible too!

[fizzix]

I might almost have a playstyle birth option for fast diving. If it's set to off, I'd have checkpoints where you have to have killed certain unique(s) in order to go deeper. If it's turned on, I'd tweak things so I'd be very dangerous NOt to dive fast.

I don't think this is that good of an idea. I've beaten the game with semi-fast diving and with slow level-clearing methods. Both are fun, and both have their own difficulties. I wouldn't recommend encouraging either playstyle, even if it's through a setable option.

[will_asher]

I don't think this is that good of an idea. I've beaten the game with semi-fast diving and with slow level-clearing methods. Both are fun, and both have their own difficulties. I wouldn't recommend encouraging either playstyle, even if it's through a setable option.

I just don't like it when objectively the best advice is to go straight to dL98 (although this is probably isn't the case in DJA as much as in V anyway).

[Pete Mack]

PS: I must admit, I do really like the fact that skilled players can dive to stupid depths so quickly... I think if I was on a mission to kill two people in a dungeon full of monsters I'd wanna get down to the bottom as quick as possible too!

Exactly right! Classic angband strategy:

1. Kill Sauron
2. Kill Morgoth
3. Don't die.

How is this "abuse"?

[Atarlost]

Have the chance certain particularly obnoxious monsters (ie zephyr hounds) being generated be inversely proportional to the number of player turns since the start of the game. It's a little hackish, but it should do almost exactly what you want: discourage diving without making it impossible.

[Timo Pietilä]

Exactly right! Classic angband strategy:

1. Kill Sauron
2. Kill Morgoth
3. Don't die.

How is this "abuse"?

I don't see any reason to penalize diving. Diving or not diving should not be even considered when doing game designing decisions. All that matters is "is the game fun?". It should be possible to play this game any way you want it to be played with no restrictions, time limits, artificial counters that do things differently by turn numbers. It should be just as much fun to just explore or to dive. Diving should be hard naturally, not by some artificial method.

[TJS]

How's about getting rid of stat potions altogether? It eliminates the boring stat gain part of the game and prevents all end game characters looking the same (mages acting like warriors for example) and it makes each race/class combo a totally different challenge.

You could give each class and race a few more stat points at the start to help compensate a little bit.

Someone mentioned changing the way stats work so the best bonuses don't just come at the really high values to make the stat curve a bit smoother, so perhaps this would be a good change to make at the same time.

[ewert]

I just don't like it when objectively the best advice is to go straight to dL98 (although this is probably isn't the case in DJA as much as in V anyway).

I'd not say that it is objectively the best advice, at all. Now if you added that the best advice is to semi-dive (gain some lvls and bit of cash for consumables and lucky shop picks, pick up FA/SI pre20 hopefully) to 30ish, gain some basic CON/dmgstats and cover some basic necessary resists and THEN dive to 98...