Making the game harder, take two

[Magnate]

Lastly, I don't understand buzzkill's complaint, or rather, I think I understand it but I don't think of it as bad. Angband development seems to me a lot closer to say, evolution, than to intelligent design. I don't think this is a bad thing. Moving towards a specific goal is impossible when no one can agree on what that goal should be. If anything threads like this are focused on creating a clearer goal. Namely, making the game more difficult.

Well said. Thank you for saving me from a rant.

Remember folks, nobody has to play nightlies. 3.1.2v2 is a perfectly decent game, as is 3.1.1 and 3.0.9b and 3.0.6 and so on back to frog-knows. They're all at rephial.org.

[TJS]

Mm, as far as shopping is concerned, the only items you really need to have to continue into the dungeon are a) Word of Recall, b) stat restores (in egregious situations), and c) spellbooks. If you add a service to restore stats, and change the town spellbooks to be indestructible but weigh 6 pounds each, then the only remaining item that the stores would have to refresh their stock on would be Word of Recall scrolls.

(I include stat restores because the player is occasionally subject to situations that make the game simply not fun to play until they can get their stats restored. It is generally not considered a fun challenge to play as a priest who got his WIS drained to 12 by a Lost Soul he couldn't combat effectively, for example. More usually, minor drains are not a serious hindrance and the player can simply deal until they naturally find a restoring item.)

If you knew exactly how many ?WoR were in the shops then you could plan your returns to town accordingly. It would be worth going out of your way to pick them up in the dungeon when they are running low.

The trouble with stat restoring is that if it is guaranteed in town then it all becomes a bit pointless. You just need to go through the hassle of recalling back to town. I think having a few in town, but once they've gone then that's it would help solve the Lost Soul problem, without making stat drain trivial for the whole game.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I would LOVE to see indestructible spellbooks; I really dislike the notion that you have to carry a library around with you.

[TJS]

I could def agree with this, but then again someone can just scum around and kill turns until stores get stocked with what they want, so would you really change much in the game except pushing people to waste more time? I guess I don't have much of a solution for that. I'm more or less fine with restores and books being readily available, while making increase stats and maybe enchant more scarce. (enchant weapon and armor is also in spell books, as I found out playing a rogue).

But I would err on the side of not changing much unless there was some good consensus or brilliant idea of direction to take.

If you eliminated shops restocking altogether then you wouldn't be tempted to wait for a restock. Also it would it more tactical when to buy items. If there is only one !restore strength then you might not use it up straight away if you were only drained one point of strength.

Without restocking you could sell stuff to the shops and buy it back later at a premium (including some nice egos and artifacts that you would otherwise not have any room for).

[Derakon]

Mm, as far as shopping is concerned, the only items you really need to have to continue into the dungeon are a) Word of Recall, b) stat restores (in egregious situations), and c) spellbooks. If you add a service to restore stats, and change the town spellbooks to be indestructible but weigh 6 pounds each, then the only remaining item that the stores would have to refresh their stock on would be Word of Recall scrolls.

(I include stat restores because the player is occasionally subject to situations that make the game simply not fun to play until they can get their stats restored. It is generally not considered a fun challenge to play as a priest who got his WIS drained to 12 by a Lost Soul he couldn't combat effectively, for example. More usually, minor drains are not a serious hindrance and the player can simply deal until they naturally find a restoring item.)

[fbas]

Actually I agree with you about the really good stuff not being available in shops. It might be nice to have a few really good items to save up for.

I was more referring to the unlimited amounts of ?phase, !CCW, !restore stat, ammo, ?enchant, magic and prayer books.

It would be good to use the shops a lot at the start of the game, but less as the game goes on and the shops run out of stuff.

I could def agree with this, but then again someone can just scum around and kill turns until stores get stocked with what they want, so would you really change much in the game except pushing people to waste more time? I guess I don't have much of a solution for that. I'm more or less fine with restores and books being readily available, while making increase stats and maybe enchant more scarce. (enchant weapon and armor is also in spell books, as I found out playing a rogue).

But I would err on the side of not changing much unless there was some good consensus or brilliant idea of direction to take.

[TJS]

but I disagree a little with the shops carrying too much good stuff.

Actually I agree with you about the really good stuff not being available in shops. It might be nice to have a few really good items to save up for.

I was more referring to the unlimited amounts of ?phase, !CCW, !restore stat, ammo, ?enchant, magic and prayer books.

It would be good to use the shops a lot at the start of the game, but less as the game goes on and the shops run out of stuff.

[fbas]

[QUOTE=Estie;43866]

Instadeaths are an inherently part of Angband and most any RL. Removing or minimizing them just seems wrong.

personally I don't like deaths, especially insta-deaths in most video games. I'd prefer that the most a single attack could do is bring you within inches of your life (put you at 0, but alive).

[Derakon]

The hardest games of Angband I play are the ones where good gear is scarce but I push on anyway. That pushes me outside my comfort zone, gets me into trouble more often, and forces me to take risks that, with better gear, wouldn't be anywhere near as dangerous.

Of course, you can't simply reduce the rate at which good gear drops; then people can simply scum levels until they get better gear. Ideally the game should encourage (without enforcing) a steady rate of descent instead, so the player can feel like they're continually making progress.

So here's one possible idea: the first time the player enters a new dungeon level, it should be biased to be more high-stakes. Nastier monsters, generated awake, but with better loot. Greater odds of uniques, vaults, and pits, too. Repeats of the same dungeon level wouldn't be as interesting; thus the fast way to improve yourself is to clear each level once. Then we just have to scale normal item drops so that there's a clear difference between the first-visit level and the repeat-visit levels. You can still scum the same dungeon level for more gear, but it should be blatantly obvious to the player that this isn't as effective as diving. Similarly, you can still bail on a level that's gotten dangerous, but it won't be your first choice whenever you get into trouble.

This isn't to say that every first-visit dungeon level should have useful gear/consumables on it. Just that they should be far more likely to than repeat-visit levels. Say, twice as many monsters, half of which (and all uniques of which) are generated awake, plus ten times as many floor items and a doubled vault/pit chance.

[NotMorgoth]

On the TO front, how about an idea 'borrowed' from Dungeon Crawl: TO (and possibly other teleport effects) take some time to kick in - not as long as recall but a few turns? So you would have to think more about whether you could safely use it if the monster would get a move before you could get out of LOS.

[AnonymousHero]

Add a monster spell "blink towards" -- a sort of semi-directed blink. It makes blinking monsters much more interesting/dangerous in O and FA.

[fbas]

Here are my suggestions:

Equipment is too easy to come by - make them rarer, especially egos and artifacts.

There are too many useful things available in the shops. I'd give them a limited amount of stock and when they're gone that's it, you'll have to find anything else yourself.

...

Get rid of preserve mode. If you see the palantir in a vault and it is being guarded by Huan then you need to either take a risk or lose it forever.

I like the idea of risk for valuable things. I think high valued artifacts should come with a high chance of being protected or near high powered monsters rather than random drops or laying on the ground. (pardon my ignorance if this is partly already true and that high level creatures carry better drops, rather than it being just depth related).

but I disagree a little with the shops carrying too much good stuff. I find that the shops almost never have anything I want (other than increase stat potions, which are too easy to beef up on.. I used to play moria back in the day and it seemed a lot harder then to get most stats over 18). and especially at certain levels, my millions are basically worthless, which is odd since I spend some good time hauling stuff to the surface to build my bankroll.. feels like I go from broke and wanting stuff to filthy rich and not having anything to buy, really quickly. I wouldn't want there to be tons of good stuff to buy, which would make it a money game more than a dungeon game, but would like to see, on rare occassions, some totally awesome and totally overpriced artifact in the black market.

I don't know much about or care about banish and destruct scrolls since I never use them. I'm ok with things being in the game like that because I can ignore them and play at the difficulty level that I desire.

---

I think someone hinted at it above, but I would rather see changes in vanilla that improve game play mechanics and menus rather than changing content. there's a slight schism between some things being available in the windowed menu and other things being accessed through in-game keystroke-driven menus ~ and =.

aside from the high volume and ease of finding valuable things, I'm fine with keeping the content much the same, while improving interface, squelch layout and options, maybe some macro and keymap management tools to simplify or explain better, and maybe expanding squelch and macro language for things like conditionals (if wisdom < max_wisdom, don't squelch restorewisdom, gain wisdom potion).

I'm kind of a passing player (though I'll definitely play more vanilla), though, so I don't expect changes to appease me. I'm probably moving onto tomenet for a bit next, but thought I'd leave some of my impressions.

[ewert]

I've long been a proponent of reducing destruction's effectiveness. Mainly by allowing monsters to save and if they do, teleporting them (as in TO) or moving them directly outside the destruction zone. This keeps destruction as an escape, a turn buying maneuver. But it doesn't make the level completely safe anymore. Destruction should also remove artifacts. I hate that it doesn't.

This sounds really, really good to me. TO nonuniques, push uniques with *destr*. Heck, don't even give a save, and I mean that totally remove the "remove monster" part of *destr*. =) Also yeah, remove artifacts.

REALLY good sounding to me. Okay, I have to confess, I think lately I don't use even *destr* really ... still carry it usually, but use? ... Can't remember using it at all with my last warrior winner, except for messing up the terrain pre-Morgoth fight.

[TJS]

Here are my suggestions:

Equipment is too easy to come by - make them rarer, especially egos and artifacts.

There are too many useful things available in the shops. I'd give them a limited amount of stock and when they're gone that's it, you'll have to find anything else yourself.

Detection and avoidance is too easy. Make any detected monsters appear as the letter only so you aren't sure what it is. Same with ESP (once you've seen a monster though then you know what it is until you leave the level). Keep infravision as it meaning it will remain useful after ESP is found.

Get rid of preserve mode. If you see the palantir in a vault and it is being guarded by Huan then you need to either take a risk or lose it forever.

Make *Destruct* remove artifacts as well as everything else.

Teleport other only removes the first monster it hits who has a chance to resist it.

Banishment and mass banishment only affects monsters in line of sight.

I'd also like to see monsters using spells on each other. You have this to a certain extent with monsters that haste others in line of sight, but it would be good to take it further with monsters healing and cloning powerful monsters.

[Nomad]

As somebody who tends to descend quite steadily, exploring most levels and taking on almost everything that's not going to result in insta-death, I actually find the difficulty level quite well-balanced. I think the issue is lack of association between risk and reward: it's too easy for experienced divers to collect high-quality gear without being forced to take on challenging battles to get it. "Evade anything tough until you've got the perfect kit to make killing it easy" is just as rewarding a play style as slogging it out in epic battles with monsters you can only just handle.

So, two suggestions I would make would be:

1. Restrict artefact generation so they're only ever found in vaults or dropped by uniques, never just lying on the floor or dropped by random monsters.

2. Get rid of wands and spells of teleport other, but leave the rods. That way, you still have it as a tool, but you're restricted to a limited number of shots at a time so you can't wade in and clear an entire vault with it.