(Hopefully) useful code snippet modifies "]" command to highlight unidentified items

[Magnate]

I hate this idea.

But of course. Your preferred play style relies on maximum available information.

[PowerDiver]

But of course. Your preferred play style relies on maximum available information.

It's a question of how much strategy you want in the game.

I really don't see the problem you are trying to solve. It appears to me that the intent is to force people to explore everywhere, and remove the element of deciding which places are worth the risk to explore. People who want to clear levels will do so whether you make this change or not, so the only point is to stop people from making informed risk/reward decisions.

[Magnate]

It's a question of how much strategy you want in the game.

I really don't see the problem you are trying to solve. It appears to me that the intent is to force people to explore everywhere, and remove the element of deciding which places are worth the risk to explore. People who want to clear levels will do so whether you make this change or not, so the only point is to stop people from making informed risk/reward decisions.

Timo, are you there? You're much better at explaining this than me.

The point Timo makes well is that all the instantly available information has removed a lot of the mystery from the game. Now I'm much more like you, Eddie, in most cases - anything I could achieve with memory and note-taking ought to be available in the game. But Timo points out that certain things shouldn't necessarily be known - like the exact dice of a weapon on the other side of the dungeon, or whether a red D is an ancient red or a great hell wyrm, etc.

So this proposal is to bring back a bit of the mystery by reducing the available information. Don't worry - I never kidded myself that we would agree on this one.

[bulian]

For what its worth, I'm also opposed to weakening detection of items and monsters, particularly monsters. Armor and weapons are currently unknown until picked up, and so long as squelched rings/amulets/scrolls/etc. remain squelched, than changes to item detection probably isn't too big of a deal. Of course, if it were up to me, store inventories would either (a) include early detection rods (dObj, stairs/doors, traps) or (b) have fixed inventories of the appropriate scrolls, but I like to play fast.

With instadeath, muddled monster information, however, seems too dangerous. Whether an "L" is a black reaver or a regular lich is a huge disparity in power and survivability.

I don't see any problem, however, of making weak detection (pseudo-detection?) a birth option, as players could ignore it if they so desired.

[ChodTheWacko]

The point Timo makes well is that all the instantly available information has removed a lot of the mystery from the game.

like the exact dice of a weapon on the other side of the dungeon, or whether a red D is an ancient red or a great hell wyrm, etc.

So this proposal is to bring back a bit of the mystery by reducing the available information. Don't worry - I never kidded myself that we would agree on this one.

Instakill changes everything, however.

In a normal RPG, if you were at an entrance to a vault, you wouldn't know what is inside, but you'd know there would be nasty monsters and great treasure inside. Part of the fun/excitement is getting to open it up and see what is inside.

In Angband, you'd open it up and get breathed on the next turn.

So yes, it's too bad there isn't more exploration. I actually enjoy early levels where you get to run around finding things and sometimes needing to run if you pop into a room that has more than you can handle. It's fun and exciting. It's that indiana jones moment where you charge into a room, see a room full of black orcs, and turn around screaming while a whole troop of orcs is chasing you, shooting arrows, until you reach a staircase.

Then you reach a level where if you try that you instantly die, and the game changes completely. But it can (and perhaps should) be argued that the majority of the game is 'past that point'. This is the nature of Angband and I'm not sure it should, will, or can be changed.

- Frank

[buzzkill]

I would imagine that if implemented properly, early detection would be cheap and would suffice for the lower levels when many flavors and other stuff is still unknown. I'd assume that by the time one gets into stat gain territory a stronger, more expensive, *detection* would be available, one that ID's specific items and monsters at a distance, thus avoiding needless travel and insta-death. IMO, as with so many things, the implementation will determine if it's a success or failure.

I'm middle of the road on this one because I think it's going to be *hard* to get right, and in the end (regardless) someones going to be pissed about it.

[Magnate]

I would imagine that if implemented properly, early detection would be cheap and would suffice for the lower levels when many flavors and other stuff is still unknown. I'd assume that by the time one gets into stat gain territory a stronger, more expensive, *detection* would be available, one that ID's specific items and monsters at a distance, thus avoiding needless travel and insta-death. IMO, as with so many things, the implementation will determine if it's a success or failure.

I'm middle of the road on this one because I think it's going to be *hard* to get right, and in the end (regardless) someones going to be pissed about it.

Well said. It will be hard to get right - part of the "long road" to 3.3 - it *will* change, since 3.3 is all about making the game harder again - and it will almost certainly piss some people off.

I will undertake to warn people when any changes to detection go into nightlies, so they can stick with an earlier nightly (or 3.2) if they prefer. But OTOH the nightlies are all about testing so we can get this right ...

[Max Stats]

I'm all for the object list being totally sortable and colour-coded for objects you have already physically plodded over to see.

Etc.

If the game does go this route, how about this as a compromise: objects become "discovered" as soon as they enter into the character's LOS (maybe they should also have to be illuminated either by being in a lit room or passing through the character's light radius). So from a slight distance you can still distinguish the color of a potion, for example, without having to actually step over it.

[PowerDiver]

Well said. It will be hard to get right - part of the "long road" to 3.3 - it *will* change, since 3.3 is all about making the game harder again - and it will almost certainly piss some people off.

This change to nerfing detections doesn't make the game that much harder. What it does is to change the risk/reward dynamic so that the player is better off avoiding potentially dangerous areas and focusing even more on clearing deep orc/troll/giant pits and otherwise beating up on wimps. You only get a certain number of times you should risk 1/1000 chance of death. If you don't have a specific goal you know *for sure* is worthwhile, you should not take that chance.

If you want to make things more dangerous, triple hound pack sizes and frequency. The only egos on DSM should be those on heavy armors such as plate, in particular no permanence or speed. Remove brands or bonus shots or bonus blows entirely from off slots. Remove ego items and any flavored item of depth > DL20 from the stores including the black market. Revert proportional healing to the old fixed healing. These sorts of changes would make a real difference in difficulty and leave the strategic decisions in place.

[Hariolor]

This change to nerfing detections doesn't make the game that much harder. What it does is to change the risk/reward dynamic so that the player is better off avoiding potentially dangerous areas and focusing even more on clearing deep orc/troll/giant pits and otherwise beating up on wimps. You only get a certain number of times you should risk 1/1000 chance of death. If you don't have a specific goal you know *for sure* is worthwhile, you should not take that chance.

If you want to make things more dangerous, triple hound pack sizes and frequency. The only egos on DSM should be those on heavy armors such as plate, in particular no permanence or speed. Remove brands or bonus shots or bonus blows entirely from off slots. Remove ego items and any flavored item of depth > DL20 from the stores including the black market. Revert proportional healing to the old fixed healing. These sorts of changes would make a real difference in difficulty and leave the strategic decisions in place.

Aren't your suggestions also rewarding the player for beating up on wimps and playing it safe?

Making it harder to survive in any way yields increased caution, whether it's by buffing monsters, nerfing items, limiting detection.

IMO, limiting detection will certainly make players more sheepish as you suggest, since they won't know if an item is worth going after. But if the uncertainty is applied uniformly, then all that is required is more exploration (to sneek and peek), or more patience (for easy pits or unguarded items to turn up). I think playtesting could yield a balance, especially if it is possible to more reliably predict in a meta-sense when items in pits/vaults will be worth the risk.

Also, all these ideas need not be an either/or thing.

[fizzix]

If you want to make things more dangerous, triple hound pack sizes and frequency.

How will this make anything more difficult? There is little difference between a pack size of 20 and one of 60. Back before hounds were nerfed they were the most tedious part of the game by far. In fact, they *still* are the most tedious part of the game. Increasing hound frequency will raise instakills from teleportation slightly but raise the endless boredom of having to lure them into killable terrain much more. For every pack of instakilling gravity hounds there are 6-10 packs of stupid-annoying hounds that you have to wade through.

The first change I ever made to angband code was to reduce hound frequency. Not because the game was too hard, but because killing 50 hounds on every level was mind-numbingly boring.

The only egos on DSM should be those on heavy armors such as plate, in particular no permanence or speed.

Just make them rarer. DSM of speed is pretty rare already, and you still may prefer an artifact armor.

Remove brands or bonus shots or bonus blows entirely from off slots.

So get rid of the Haradrim shield? Or branding rings? Removing the branding rings might make a difference but not a significant one. Finding one early is huge though. I'd make them drop at speed ring depth.

Remove ego items and any flavored item of depth > DL20 from the stores including the black market.

I kind of agree with this one. Instead though, I'd like to see the store prices increased greatly. Regular stores by a factor of 5 and BM by a factor of 10. Too many games my first -TO or _speed was purchased from the BM. I regularly get stacks of ?TL and ?DD from stores as well. This *does* make things easier.

Revert proportional healing to the old fixed healing.

We've both played with fixed healing. Do you really think this will make much of a difference beyond forcing players to hunt around for !healing potions? This doesn't add difficulty, it adds another layer of tedium. The main purpose for healing potions is to cure status ailments anyways.

These sorts of changes would make a real difference in difficulty and leave the strategic decisions in place.

1.5 changes I agree with, 1.5 others will have negligible effects, and the last 2 will increase difficulty in that they increase tedium. boredom leads to mistakes leads to death. This isn't the difficulty you want though, so I think I must be missing your reasoning.

[Derakon]

Just make them rarer. DSM of speed is pretty rare already, and you still may prefer an artifact armor.

Every single time I've found DSM of Speed it's gotten used at least up to the endgame, if not through the endgame, even if the only thing of use it provided was the speed boost. And I've found plenty of 'em. Big speed boosts on body armor are too powerful; the slot doesn't have anything else that can compete unless your resistance setup is screwed.

[fizzix]

Every single time I've found DSM of Speed it's gotten used at least up to the endgame, if not through the endgame, even if the only thing of use it provided was the speed boost. And I've found plenty of 'em. Big speed boosts on body armor are too powerful; the slot doesn't have anything else that can compete unless your resistance setup is screwed.

ok, then we probably need to increase their rarity. I've only come across them once I think. I'm not opposed to removing the speed boost either, or capping it at 4 or something.

[PowerDiver]

Aren't your suggestions also rewarding the player for beating up on wimps and playing it safe?

My suggestions are about danger. Changes that affect whether the player can kill a monster. In the case of hounds, it is about making some areas either impassable for weaker chars or increasing inventory damage which amounts to fewer consumables. Obviously, if you are weaker you have to fight lesser foes or else use more consumables and fight fewer equal foes.

Suppose you detect a 4-chamber moated room with a dangerous out-of-depth monster and a potion. If the potion is known to be interesting, you might take the risk of trying to sneak past the monster and fight it if it wakes up. If it is a randomly generated potion and you have no more info you should steer clear.

I know that I have at least a dozen times a game when I head to a scary part of the dungeon in order to get a particular something that lead to exciting battles. Those would go away. If the potions on the floor are indistinguishable, it is crazy to risk passing by a dangerous foe when you can change levels and risk only a lesser foe for another potion with the same expected payoff.

[PowerDiver]

1.5 changes I agree with, 1.5 others will have negligible effects, and the last 2 will increase difficulty in that they increase tedium. boredom leads to mistakes leads to death. This isn't the difficulty you want though, so I think I must be missing your reasoning.

I wasn't arguing that these are necessarily good changes. My point is that these are changes that make the game more dangerous. For level clearers, changes to item detection do not make the game any more dangerous at all. For the strategic, item detection nerfing causes more level switching and more emphasis on clearing deep orc/troll/giant pits. If your goal is really about making the game harder, I believe you need to make changes along the lines of what I listed, by weakening the offensive or defensive capabilities of the player.