Something between 2000' and 5000'

[Timo Pietilä]

I thought this discussion is about how to make people spend more time on levels rather than dive. Is not the premise that if people influenced by me give advice to dive from 50 to 99, then it follows that something is wrong? If this thread is about something different, could you be more specific?

I'll try.

Reason why I made this thread was to encourage people to invent means to make levels between 2000-4900 interesting, so that they are not just "dive thru these because you are better off deep down" -areas. I don't think diving is wrong, I have done that, but I also think that slower playing styles should find those levels interesting.

As I said before to me journey is more important than destination, so I want to have fun in every level I enter, not just treat levels as speedbumps while finding another stairs.

Wrong is that your advice to dive from 50 to 99 is correct even for my point of view. It should not be. That's the problem. There is nothing interesting in those levels now. There should be. Not even that old jump of danger level. I like to explore, but if there is nothing to explore why do it? Why even bother to play? To win? Been there, done that. To find something? Well something, yes, but something specific? No. To me, as it is now, game is over soon after stat-gain. After that there is nothing to gain. Just general increases in character power with nothing really interesting in it. Blur of uniques, each as boring as previous one with some refreshing exceptions (Gorlim, Azriel, Phoenix, Vecna).

What I ultimately would like to see this game have is different paths to win. Different character development chains. Item combinations that makes you think twice because they offer something that no other combination offers, but not being overpowered and overcompetitive at the same time. Things to find. Rarities to discover. Surprises to endure and/or enjoy. And possibility to get your char to demigod with right gear that you could enjoy occasional "I just beat Balrog of Moria with iron spike" -moments.

All of the above has been lost at some point. Some of them never existed. A GV every now and then would spice up the game. Some new goal monster. Maybe with fixed drops (Saruman = Palantir?)

[Nick]

I don't really see your point Nick aside rambling. I'm fine with ramblings though.

Yes, good call.

My point is that there are other modes of playing besides diving/clearing/combination. For example, I don't think my playstyle really fits in that spectrum, and I suspect nor does Timo's.

When I started, it seemed like Angband was an incredibly hostile world, and you needed to use every trick you could come up with to survive. To actually win it took a ridiculous amount of time and concentration and care - but there was the feeling that if you put that in, you could almost guarantee a win. The hard one was the care - if you routinely took a 1 in 100 chance of dying, then sooner or later one of them would kill you. And all the way through, there were opportunities to advance if you were prepared to take a risk - so you had to balance the risk with the likely reward, and if you had already been playing the character for two weeks, it had to be a good reward.

Now IMHO the big change was when it was recognised (chiefly by Eddie) that another way to minimise the overall time and risk was to actually

1. take bigger risks, but many less of them and
2. be prepared to die, because you hadn't invested much time in the character anyway.

On the whole, I think it is this change in attitude that has changed the nature of the game, rather than actual code changes. However, this changed attitude has included more impatience - hence TMJ is a problem, because who can be bothered with sorting through a whole bunch of items with a character you're not really attached to? And I think that some game changes have been principally driven by this impatience; and that while the game world is still hostile, the character is now equipped with more technology to tame it.

I'm trying to be descriptive here, and I'm not anti-change. Except that I think that compressing to 10 levels is the most horrible idea I have ever heard conceived, and it should be strangled at birth with extreme prejudice. Having Morgoth on level 100 is IMHO an integral part of the glorious insanity of Angband; anyone who chooses can make a Quickband-like variant.

I'll shut up for now, but I'll be back...

[fizzix]

So I've been thinking a lot when reading this thread about what makes the game interesting (for me). In the same vein, I've tried to figure out what I don't like. I think I've boiled it down to the following:

More decisions = more interesting

I should keep track of how often I need to stop and think in a game, it'd be a useful exercise. Off the top of my head I think something like 90% of the stop and think decisions are inventory management. 9% are do i fight or flee and what escape do I use. 1% are what method should I use to kill this monster. Even though the fight vs flee are only 9%, since the stakes are higher in those, they get weighted more. Should I go to the next level is never a decision for me.

I don't know how to add more decisions, and I don't even know if this is what makes it fun for other people. I can say that I found restricting the number of stairs to be pretty interesting as it really does force you to interact with the level. No one else seems to like that approach, and that's fine with me. But I think this is a question that we need to ask. What makes a level interesting?

If I was to make one suggestion to game play it would be to make confuse/slow/sleep/scare to be a lot more effective. This would add some tactics to a pretty forced set of options. It would also bring up that 1% of my decision making to a higher level. Right now, they're completely useless.

side note: GVs are interesting, but they're interesting partly because of their rarity. (at least to me)

[Derakon]

On the whole, I think it is this change in attitude that has changed the nature of the game, rather than actual code changes. However, this changed attitude has included more impatience - hence TMJ is a problem, because who can be bothered with sorting through a whole bunch of items with a character you're not really attached to? And I think that some game changes have been principally driven by this impatience; and that while the game world is still hostile, the character is now equipped with more technology to tame it.

TMJ was a problem well before powerdiving became prominent. Back in the 2.8 days, clearing a troll or orc pit meant sorting through ~50 items, most of which were junk. Vaults, especially the ones with plenty of open space for groups to expand into, could be similar. Every great wyrm you killed dropped 16 items (once floor stacks were added), and most were bog-standard magical items. Sure, having more junk items means there are more "this item might be the one I want!", but as an average player back in those days, if you'd asked me to choose between many monsters dropping items that were largely useless vs. few monsters dropping items that were only mostly useless, I would have gone with the second option.

More generally, recent decisions have been looking for sources of tedium and trying to remove it. Sorting through loot was a major cause of tedium, so it was heavily streamlined. In the process it was probably made a bit easier, but I would say the change was a net positive. That doesn't mean it can't be further improved, of course.

BTW, I would be very, very surprised if the 10-level pancake Angband were made an official patch. It's just an idea I had that I wanted to experiment with, to see how the game plays when you remove 90% of it.

[Antoine]

compressing to 10 levels is the most horrible idea I have ever heard conceived, and it should be strangled at birth with extreme prejudice

A.

[Nick]

A.

I hope this didn't come across as a go at Quickband. I love Quickband - but I think it works as an alternative to V, not a replacement.

[PowerDiver]

In that case my normal playing style is optimized to near perfect. I win nearly every single game I play. I don't dive because I find that kind of boring way to play. There is no reward in diving. And based on what Eddie said how long it takes him to win real time I might actually be faster than he is.

This is certainly a difference in what we look for in a game. If I play a game I can win 90% of the time, I either up the difficulty level or quit playing. It ceases to be interesting to me. I am much happier having a 50% or even 35% chance of winning. I find it much more exciting when I take 10 risks around 5% a game because I am forced to in order to reach predetermined objectives Did I take the right risk or should I have held off and taken the risk some other time? That is the sort of thing I find most interesting.

I'm not interested in winning fast per se. It is a means, not the end. I prefer to dive quickly so that I will be underpowered so that I will be forced to make tough decisions regarding tradeoffs. You prefer to rest between fights without thinking about it. I want the decision about whether to rest to make a difference in whether I can win the game given the conditions I have allowed to myself. I want every decision to matter as much as possible, including whether to rest or risk running into the next foe to weak to handle it. Ideally, I'd like to get into positions where I need to think for 15 minutes to decide my next action. Going slow so I can kill by holding down an arrow key holds no interest to me.

[nppangband]

What new sources of poison resist have been added pre-2000'? The only thing I can think of is that Rings of Resist Poison are a bit more common. Okay, and addition of Elvenkind shields, but those are very rare and statistically unlikely to have resist poison. IMO all that has significantly changed is that people are more realistic about the risks posed from Drolems and AMHDs.

That was the point. There was virtually no sources of poison resist before 2000'. There were a couple hard to find artifacts, and that was it. To take you back even further, Moria had absolutely no poison resist, and a poison breath from a healthy AMHD was instadeath. But for that reason there was nothing more thrilling than taking one on. I even invented a system to safely clone them and farm them. Everything had to be done perfectly, and there was plenty that could go wrong, but it was thrilling trying.

Rings of poison resist used to have a depth of, IIRC, '4000, and they were rare. At the time, you had to take real risks, because the equipment needed to protect you from dangerous creatures were about 10 levels below the native depth of the dangerous creatures themselves. You started to need speed at 2750, you found it at 3750'. So you dove, but you did it in increments.

There is nothing wrong with powerdiving. In the old days u had to do it to win, but selectively. You had to hang around at certain depths to get the best kit you could realistically expect to get, then dive about 500 feet, and hope your weakpoints don't get you killed before you fill them. But it should involve genuine risk, and shouldn't guarantee success. Monsters weren't so easy to avoid, because telepathy was also supposed to be a rare treat until 4500'.

But nowadays, where people go straight from stat-gain to 4900', that's too much. Angband has become a 50 level game disguised as a 100 level game.

[d_m]

So first of all I am really sorry I'm coming late to this thread... I was out hiking in the woods for a week without any modern conveniences!

First of all as someone who has commit access I feel kind of weird being spoken about as part of the shadowy cabal known as "current Angband developers." I certainly don't consider myself a diver... my first win was as a grinding warrior who killed every unique before fighting sauron and morgoth and just bludgeoned them with aule over and over... my two other wins have leaned more heavily on detection and avoidance but have still been pretty slow.

Second, I don't actually feel authorized to make major tweaks to the game. The major changes that I have made have all been tickets opened by Takkaria about what he wanted the game to have (e.g. the quiver). Obviously a lot of people are unhappy with the quiver and many of the other changes, but I don't feel like they represent *my* vision for the game (I have actually been working on a variant because some of my ideas are probably too weird for V).

Third, I think Takkaria agrees with Timo that levels 50-99 are too boring/generic/uninteresting/dumb/whatever and that something needs to be done to fix it... I think there's a ticket open about it. Awhile ago I was working on a patch to dungeon generation to try to make levels more interesting, but I put that down after the controversy that even just "small" levels caused (plus the fact that there are at least a thousand people on here who know more about level generation in Angband than me). But maybe it's worth picking back up.

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm getting at other than "I was only following orders" and "I'm only trying to help."

[Derakon]

To get back on the topic of more interesting things that could be added between 2000' and 5000'...

Let us take it as given for the moment that we do not want to put roadblocks in the dungeon. Which is to say, signs that say You Must Be This Tall To Pass are out. That means no new quest monsters, no "special levels" (vaults the size of the entire level), no staircase guardians. What else can we do? Here's some brainstorming:

* Have alternate dungeon layout generators. One of the common complaints with Angband is that every level looks the same. If, say, the first 10 and last 10 levels of the dungeon used the current generator, and every block of 10 between had a separate algorithm, then that would add significant variance to the terrain of the dungeon without actually requiring special terrain. Some possible algorithms:
** A classic labyrinth; you could think of it as taking the existing generator and replacing the "fill" with corridors. Digging for navigation would become much more useful (getting anywhere specific without digging or stone-to-mud would be an exercise in patience); however, the lack of large blocks of solid walls would mean that anti-summoning corridors would be impossible.
** Fill the entire dungeon with adjacent rooms. Each room connects to nearby rooms via doors, secret or otherwise. The lack of corridors again means that the player has less ability to force their own terrain for a given fight. The level would probably need to be fairly sparsely-populated.
** A single level where every room is a pit. This probably wouldn't work well unless pits were changed to start asleep (when appropriate to the monster type); otherwise it's too speed-bumpy.

* Give the player optional challenges they can attempt. Something like the random quest generator used in some variants: pick a mildly out-of-depth monster, scatter a few on the level, and give the player a bonus of some kind (Experience? A stat boost? A free item (of what quality?)?) if they can kill them all. Divers probably will be too weak to attempt the quests, but will still have to deal with sneaking by the quest monsters en route to the stairs. My biggest criticism here is that quests are vulnerable to being too easy, way too hard, or bizarre -- a quest to kill 8 Dreads (group-type, native to 42) is much different from a quest to kill 12 Undead Beholders (native to 45) or a quest to kill 6 Death Molds (native to 47).

* Theme the monsters on a level. UnAngband does this well. Sometimes you find a level that's all demons, sometimes it's all orcs, sometimes it's all angels. Again, if you don't like the monsters in question you can try to bypass them, but otherwise they give you a different challenge than usual.

* Generate a standard level with a greater vault, force an artifact in the vault, ID it, and tell the player the artifact is there. If they leave the level, the artifact is lost (since it's already ID'd). Divers, again, can learn to deal without getting key pieces of equipment; nothing in the standard set is actually required, after all. Or they can try to ninja the artifact out.
** In fact, you could do the same general idea with any vault, minus the ID. "There's a Jade Ring in the lesser vault to your northwest!" is pretty interesting if you know you've already found most of the ring types. Just pick an item in the vault that's "of interest" (new flavor, important consumable, high power rating equipment, etc.) and tell the player it exists. This gives them some reason to want to check the vault out; a known reward for the risk. I don't think this should always be done; sometimes vaults should have crap in them. But it could be interesting as a sometimes event.

* Okay, this is pretty silly, but a bonus staircase that the player has to play tag with. The first three times you step on it it teleports to a new location, preferably one you haven't mapped yet. If you can chase it down enough times, it'll take you to a level that has guaranteed interesting stuff of some kind, a bit like kicking the autoscum into high gear.

[Nick]

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm getting at other than "I was only following orders" and "I'm only trying to help."

You make it so tempting to Godwin this thread...

I actually want to back off a bit - I don't really have any argument with any of the recent changes (although I'm a little wary about the improvements to artifacts), and in any case haven't played V enough lately to make informed comments.

The point I've been failing badly to make is a fairly bland one really - Angband is a very broad and diverse game, and I wouldn't want to see it narrowed. I really will shut up this time.

[Timo Pietilä]

** In fact, you could do the same general idea with any vault, minus the ID. "There's a Jade Ring in the lesser vault to your northwest!"

This got me partly laughing. I just wait for game to tell me "Theres a crapload of things you haven't seen in Greater Vaults in your left and your right".

You know, the infamous two CGV:s in same level.

[Rizwan]

I think we need to first understand why divers dive? IMHO they dive because they can find better stuff at dl 98 by exterminating an orc pit than they can by doing the same at dl 30. So the same character that can only kill orcs will definitely find better stuff at dl 98 than at dl 30. But what would happen if there were no orcs at dl 98? Or may be the orcs only dropped gold or food? What if the diving character had to fight AMHDs to get better stuff? Would he dive? I do not believe so because he simply cannot fight them. Countless AARs of divers tell of picking their fights carefully, why? He does not have the equipment and/or the hp/mana to do it. So the diver skips through the dungeon because he knows that he can kill an orc at dl 98 and get Ringil.

So maybe the monster distribution and/or the drop distribution have to be balanced ? rebalanced?

Someone mentioned tedium of going through the loot in the middle levels. Is it because of TMJ? What is TMJ? Again IMHO TMJ refers to the countless ego items you have to sift through. I mean if I have a dagger of Frost (+5+5) I am going to find that all daggers of Frost with plusses lower than what I have are junk for me and when I get a dagger of Frost with plusses more than what I currently have then my range of junk items is going to increase because now I have higher plusses and more daggers of Frost with lower attributes can be generated.

As I have mentioned before my suggestion to limit TMJ and related tedium is to limit the creation of ego items. Maybe have three daggers of Frost generated, one with poor attributes (could be negative) one with average and one with good.

I think that the answer to these two questions Why dive and what is TMJ will lead to an increase in enjoyment for all types of players of the game.


PS I hugely enjoy the game and want to thank the shadow cabal of developers for their efforts in maintaining and improving the game.

[Timo Pietilä]

Ithink we need to first understand why divers dive? IMHO they dive because they can find better stuff at dl 98 by exterminating an orc pit than they can by doing the same at dl 30. So the same character that can only kill orcs will definitely find better stuff at dl 98 than at dl 30. But what would happen if there were no orcs at dl 98? Or may be the orcs only dropped gold or food? What if the diving character had to fight AMHDs to get better stuff? Would he dive? I do not believe so because he simply cannot fight them. Countless AARs of divers tell of picking their fights carefully, why? He does not have the equipment and/or the hp/mana to do it. So the diver skips through the dungeon because he knows that he can kill an orc at dl 98 and get Ringil.

So maybe the monster distribution and/or the drop distribution have to be balanced ? rebalanced?

You did hit there a one major change game had very recently. Monster drop used to be average of monster level and dungeon level, making low level monsters drop much weaker things even in deep down. Now that game uses which is bigger mlvl or dlvl something like novice rangers at dlvl 98 are just as good as Ancient dragons. Big group of them are better than Ancient dragon, and way less dangerous.

That also means that general drop quality have got a very significant boost at very deep down. At not so old days if you killed a...lets say AMHD at 4900 you got drop depth of (2150+4900)/2 = 3525 ~3500, which is shallower than native RoS -depth. It also means that difference between deep unique drops and something like Enchantress drop is now mostly matter of quantity, not quality. If you kill a monster with large good quality drop like Archon or Great Wyrm of whateverkind and unique like Lungorthin there is no difference whatsoever. To create a difference some of the deep uniques now have added DROP_GREAT -flag, which further increases that drop quality boost.

I think this is one major change that needs reversing, diver or not diver: It works both ways, non-divers are tempted to dive to get those big-ass deep monsters for better quality drops, and divers no longer benefit from deep down puny monster kills so much forcing them to fight bigger monsters making difference between diving and non-diving less clear.

(BTW, you could still kill a orc at 4900' and get Ringil. Ringil is rare, but not deep artifact).

[Antoine]

I hope this didn't come across as a go at Quickband. I love Quickband - but I think it works as an alternative to V, not a replacement.

Was joking

A.