Making the game harder, take two

[Dean Anderson]

Dean: the trick here is that removing abilities from classes doesn't necessarily reduce your options. In fact, it can make for more interesting tactical decisions.

I agree.

But the key word there is necessarily. If done carefully it can indeed work well - but I was warning about it being done indiscriminately as a knee-jerk reaction to any part of the game appearing "too easy".

[ewert]

Lets be honest, most of the guys who play an "easy" game nowadays have been playing for years. Me included. I no longer feel danger that much, and I'm sure it is same for many others who know the ins-n-outs of the game like the back of their hands.

IMHO, there is no way to make the game hard for "us" while maintaining a semblance of good game balance overall for new gamers.

Now though making the game more varied, like making a more solid differentation between magic and prayers like Derakon posted, that will make the games more interesting definitely even for those who feel it is "easy".

Lots of the too "easy" is just "too risky to fight this for the rewards, evade" also. I know I personally succumb to this often. There is tons of situations and monsters I just evade now, that I tackled when I was less experienced in the game. THAT makes most of the difference for "the game too easy". Thus I think reducing / changing evade systems and detection will hit the hardness factor the most.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think the punishment of risk taking was never real, it was only in our heads. As soon as we started adding up the small continuous risks of slow gameplay the fewer, bigger risks of diving started looking less risky.

It is still real, difference between "old-school" playing and diving is that divers lose a lot of chars, but because they play so much faster they eventually get winners. It is a great way of learning the game, but it causes you to lose a lot more than with slower playing. It is a change in thinking what is important.

Slower pace still produces more winners/game than diving.

[dos350]

hooo

please to not be so radical~

why does angband need change so much, i have only played 3122 and 309, but i think is no need to change~~~~~

the item restock of town is annoying but ok~

making so stores dont regen ever is LUDA imo

also auto id is not fun~

why is wanted?

[Atarlost]

I think the punishment of risk taking was never real, it was only in our heads. As soon as we started adding up the small continuous risks of slow gameplay the fewer, bigger risks of diving started looking less risky.

When diving started the people who dived started racking up wins. When diving spread more wins were posted. I don't think the old norm of slow and careful game play ever got much easier.

If we want the old difficulty we need to punish diving. Maybe SP should regenerate more slowly (but maybe be a bigger pool) and HP not regenerate at all outside of town. Maybe the monster list needs to be altered so DL98 is actually more dangerous than DL80. Maybe there just shouldn't be a guarantee of a down stairway being placed on every level.

I just think we should be attacking the right problem, not removing stuff just to spread the device reliance of warriors (without spreading the hit points that that device reliance compensates for of course)

[Derakon]

Dean: the trick here is that removing abilities from classes doesn't necessarily reduce your options. In fact, it can make for more interesting tactical decisions. For example, imagine you have a spell that can make you invulnerable for a brief period. Every time you get close to being in trouble, you just cast that spell and you have plenty of time to deal with whatever's threatening you. There aren't any interesting tactical choices because that spell exists. By removing it, now you no longer have the easy option, so you have to choose from several lesser options which each have their own benefits and tradeoffs.

Naturally if you remove too much then you just end up with a weak warrior with a few spells. The goal is to find a balance between "special abilities make up for everything the character could ever want to do" and "special abilities don't differentiate the character enough from a warrior".

[Dean Anderson]

IMO the way to make things harder is to choose to differentiate by removal rather than by addition. E.g., when someone complains that mages and priests are too similar, you could either add different powers to each, or you could remove similar powers from one or the other. If you choose removal every time such a situation arises, then over time the game will naturally evolve into something harder. Same thing for egos and artifacts. Differentiate things by weakening or removing them instead of by improving them.

While I agree with this in principle, I think we do need to be wary of being over-zealous in that direction.

Difficulty is one factor, but interest level is another. Taking toys or options away from certain classes makes them less varied and interesting, so while it can be done for specific things that make the game "too easy", I don't think it should necessarily be the first resort when there are many other dials that can also be twiddled to increase the difficulty.

[nppangband]

Just on the ID topic, I think any radical changes should wait until changes to curses have been made.

Agreed, but just as a side note, a combination of mass-identification and squelch removes 95% of the issue.

[fizzix]

As you said, this approach is too radical for Vanilla. But this is almost exactly how Cryptband operates, and IMO it creates a lot more tension. It's rather nerve-racking to be limping around the level, supplies exhausted, frantically searching for a portal in dangerous territory.

I'm not certain it's too radical for vanilla. But it does make shuttling back and forth to town interesting.

It'd be fairly trivial to code too *IF* I could figure out the friggin terrain problem...

[RogerN]

An extension of this, which may be too radical: we've got stairs on each level. Why not define special, relatively small rooms, in which portals back to town exist? ... Want to go back to town? You gotta find one of the portals on the level.

As you said, this approach is too radical for Vanilla. But this is almost exactly how Cryptband operates, and IMO it creates a lot more tension. It's rather nerve-racking to be limping around the level, supplies exhausted, frantically searching for a portal in dangerous territory.

[Derakon]

Removing TO from priests is a big change. Too big IMO.

I would much rather overcorrect than undercorrect. If we make the game too hard, well, then it's quite straightforward to make it easy again.

And remember that priests losing TO just means that they have to carry TO wands/rods if they want the effect, like warriors do. It doesn't mean that the effect is not available.

We could remove Word of Destruction from mages, but if we do that then IMO priests should lose Banish Evil.

[Timo Pietilä]

While we're at it, I vote for removing the following spells:

Mage:
* Detect Invisible. This is the priests' gimmick, to help make up for their lack of generic-monster detection.

Priests have see_invisible spell, no detect invisible. Detect evil detects all evil, invisible or not. It is mages that can't detect invisibles without that spell at all. Priests get full detection later, mages don't. IMO mages need that spell, otherwise they need to carry rods of detection to detect ghosts and stuff and that would just suck.

Priest:
* Word of Destruction. Mages get the big booms, not priests.

I think mega-class world-affecting spells are priest category more than mages. Mage affects monsters with genocides and direct damage spells, priest changes dungeon. earthquake, *destruction*, alter reality.

Removing TO from priests is a big change. Too big IMO.

[Nick]

Since having been given commit access (and dev responsibility) I have felt like I have had less ability to work on my own ideas, since I spend more time trying to fix bugs the community reports, integrate other people's ideas and work (what a hobby!).

You could just ignore the responsibility, like I do

[Derakon]

Satisfy Hunger should go, agreed. It makes no sense to have a game mechanic that only applies to one class.

While we're at it, I vote for removing the following spells:

Mage:
* CLW. Apparently this has already been removed for pure-mages; I say get it out of the spellbook entirely. They can rely on potions like everyone else who doesn't have prayers.
* Detect Invisible. This is the priests' gimmick, to help make up for their lack of generic-monster detection.
* Heroism, Berserker. These should be priest spells if anything, IMO.
* Rune of Protection. Again, this is a priest thing.

Priest:
* Find Traps and Doors. Just in the interests of having more classes join the warrior's misery pile.
* Portal, Teleport Other. Teleportation is the mage's specialty.
* Resist Heat and Cold. Again a mage-centric thing; if you really want the resistance, carry potions.
* Clairvoyance. Everyone else gets by with potions, so can priests/paladins.
* Word of Destruction. Mages get the big booms, not priests.

This is ignoring spells that are functionally useless (c.f. Slow/Neutralize Poison). These are spells that are useful but reduce differentiation between spellcasters by letting everyone do everything. (Yes, priests still get Blink and Teleport Self once they find Ethereal Openings, but that's not until well after the early game is done, at which point those spells are significantly less useful)

I'd also be interested in removing Call Light from the mage spellbook and moving Spear of Light to the priests.

Finally, d_m and Magnate: I really appreciate all the work you've put into Angband. Thank you for not just talking the talk, but walking the walk when it comes to improving our favorite game.

[d_m]

So, a couple of observations.

First, I think a lot of the people who have argued about the game getting easier are right, and I think Eddie's statement about the problem makes sense.

Second, almost everyone who has posted on this forum has advocated more or less strongly for various changes to the game to be introduced (whether arguing that changes should be reverted, supplying small patches, or making major changes). This is the overwhelming reason the game lacks direction: because people with commit access have been listening to ideas from people who don't. As the (implied) target of a lot of criticism about how V is too easy, or off-target, or whatever, it's worth noting that many (if not most) of the current new features don't originate with me or Magnate, but with other people who supplied patches or whatnot, and I would say that most of the changes were directly made to address concerns on oook (e.g. consumable rarity) which I think most of us shared.

Third, Takkaria has said on IRC that he specifically wanted V development to move to a more collective model. In my interpretation that includes the wider Angband community, not just those of us with commit access, or those of us in #angband-dev, or whatever. While many people on here don't write code, many do, and most people can change the edit files. So rather than griping about how the game is too easy, or about how the direction is wrong, I would encourage people to open tickets, submit patches and modify edit files to achieve the game you want to play. The days where an iron-fisted dev runs V single-handedly are gone (and I encourage people who prefer that model to play many of the excellent variants run in exactly this mannger).

Most of the work Magnate and I have been doing lately on Angband hasn't been our own vision (or even fun) but rather corralling, testing, and integrating work and patches from many other people (fizzix, ewert, noz, Nick, elly, ...). Since having been given commit access (and dev responsibility) I have felt like I have had less ability to work on my own ideas, since I spend more time trying to fix bugs the community reports, integrate other people's ideas and work (what a hobby!). Even this work represents only a fraction of ideas that are constantly proposed and discussed here on oook, which easily overflow our ability to keep up with.

I have actually been really excited that a wider group of devs is doing work on Angband, even if in the short term this has caused some instability and shifts in difficulty. What I am hoping is that people like Pete Mack, Eddie, Timo and others who advocate for a harder, stricter game will also continue sending patches and concrete suggestions for how to improve V.

tl;dr -- Angband wants YOU... to help make V more exciting, fun, challenging and interesting than it has ever been before!