Making the game harder, take five: stealth

[Magnate]

that personal mission sucks, and i think that is the worst idea ive heard

why would want to do this?

if this were to become reality i would not bother with the new versions,

im sure others agree!

plz , no rage , lol!

Wwwooooossshhhhh.

[Jazerus]

As much as dos350 is overreacting, and as much as Angband probably needs to have a bit of a difficulty boost, it is important to make sure that changes don't overly impact the visceral aspects of Angband's fun. Finding powerful stuff in the BM is fun; killing a huge block of formerly-threatening monsters without their even getting a chance to notice is fun. More than most other roguelikes, Angband feeds a player's power-seeking and collection impulses; Nethack and Crawl have very shallow power curves in comparison, for example.

Fun-testing new stuff is a big part of why we have birth options and nightlies, so I'm not terribly concerned that the development's going to go in a direction that the Angband player community as a whole doesn't want to go.

[Antoine]

Is it just me or does anyone else find this killingly funny?

@old-dos-version: we've actually been talking about making the game harder for a while now. My personal mission is to make disconnected stairs always-on ....

By the way, Magnate, my 'occasionally disconnected stairs' change seemed to work quite well in Quick. Would you consider it for V?

A.

[Antoine]

Is it just me or does anyone else find this killingly funny?

I dare you to make it your sig

A.

[andrewdoull]

This requires that awake monsters are not aware of players presence at all of time.

There should be three stages of monster awareness:

1) asleep (obviously not aware at all)
2) awake but not aware (maybe roaming randomly)
3) aware (goes after @)
maybe 4) with invisibility awake doesn't change to aware even in LoS, unless monster has see_inv (if that gets implemented at some point).

I've tried to do this in Unangband. There, the key switch is whether you're wielding a light (monsters default to always aware of you) vs. not wielding a light (monsters default to awake but not aware); with the intention that monster towns default to (2). Obviously, invisibility will work even in lit areas, if you're not carrying a light.

The downside of course, is that you're stumbling around in darkness, and can't cast spells. Again, the intention is to have some spells castable in darkness.

There's also a separate sneaking state which is a tri-state with searching (you can be searching, sneaking or neither). Sneaking only affects monsters in line of sight and causes them to wake up more slowly by capping the amount they wake up every turn. This is done to avoid players trying to min-max when they should be sneaking vs. searching.

(IMO there is nothing wrong in stealth as it is, it just has potential to be much more).

Yep.

Another big factor is the lack of information about whether a monster is about to wake up. This is an easy fix...

[Magnate]

By the way, Magnate, my 'occasionally disconnected stairs' change seemed to work quite well in Quick. Would you consider it for V?

Hmm, interesting. I'd forgotten that - yes it did work quite well didn't it. I'd be interested in takkaria's view - since it would get rid of a birth option I expect that's a big plus. I'd rather the stairs were occasionally connected (and predominantly disconnected), but that's tweakable of course. Out of interest, what chance did you have for disconnection?

[Antoine]

Hmm, interesting. I'd forgotten that - yes it did work quite well didn't it. I'd be interested in takkaria's view - since it would get rid of a birth option I expect that's a big plus. I'd rather the stairs were occasionally connected (and predominantly disconnected), but that's tweakable of course. Out of interest, what chance did you have for disconnection?

Nice sig.

The final implementation was: when you take a stairway up, from a DL greater than 2, having taken less than [40 + rand_int(40)] steps on the level, there is a 1 in 7 chance that "The stairwell caves in behind you! You will not be able to get back down...".

It doesn't affect normal game play much, but it discourages "> < > < > < > < oh look an unguarded item I'll pick it up > < > < >" style play.

I recommend leaving the birth option in - so that stairs would either be "occasionally disconnected" (the default) or "always disconnected".

A.

[dos350]

excuse me, magnate ~ im talking to u here, please dont dodge my questions!!

why are u wanting to ruin the game of angband with ur personal mission?

[Antoine]

excuse me, magnate ~ im talking to u here, please dont dodge my questions!!

why are u wanting to ruin the game of angband with ur personal mission?

Magnate's original post was a joke - you weren't supposed to take it seriously.

A.

[TJS]

At the moment I would say Angband is too hard at the beginning and far too easy at the end.

Making stealth worse or harder to come by will make the start even more difficult, but not change the end game because by then you've got speed, resists, escapes and ESP/detection to allow you to avoid any potential danger.

I'd say a lot of the changes to make the game harder have had this effect. For example now you don't find any artifacts until a certain point and then you suddenly find loads of them, so the game goes from very difficult to much easier in a few levels.
For a lot of levels there are many monsters 2-3 times your speed who could kill you in one player turn (sometimes many times over). Then when you get enough speed this danger disappears.

If you want to make the game harder then you really need to create some sort of danger even when the player has good equipment.

One suggestion I made before is creating emergent dangers from monsters affecting each other with haste, heal, buff and clone spells (although I realise this is a huge amount of work).

[buzzkill]

I think that people who don't think that stealth is too powerful has never played an extremely stealthy character, and this can be accomplished with almost and race/class combo. Super-stealth, which isn't that hard to come by, and doesn't prohibit you from being a killing machine also, is almost like cheating. Monsters just lie there sleeping as you walk through the dungeon and collect loot (except Z's).

Any chance we can change the language from 'sleeping' to 'stationary' or 'unaware'. Seems odd that everyone's always asleep.

[d_m]

Any chance we can change the language from 'sleeping' to 'stationary' or 'unaware'. Seems odd that everyone's always asleep.

I like this idea--a middle category between helplessly asleep and tracking you to the ends of the Earth

[jens]

I think that people who don't think that stealth is too powerful has never played an extremely stealthy character, and this can be accomplished with almost and race/class combo. Super-stealth, which isn't that hard to come by, and doesn't prohibit you from being a killing machine also, is almost like cheating. Monsters just lie there sleeping as you walk through the dungeon and collect loot (except Z's).

Nice to hear there are some who agree with me :-)

Any chance we can change the language from 'sleeping' to 'stationary' or 'unaware'. Seems odd that everyone's always asleep.

I like it that ancient dragons are asleep, and some bears, maybe could dig up a few more that makes sense. But a roomful of sleeping orcs has always seemed strange to me...

[jens]

I like this idea--a middle category between helplessly asleep and tracking you to the ends of the Earth

Someone mentioned some variant where monsters can be awake, and walking towards some random destination. Borrow that code? I really like the implications of this mechanic :-)

[jens]

At the moment I would say Angband is too hard at the beginning and far too easy at the end.

I feel it's too easy at the beginning, and then it gets easier...

Making stealth worse or harder to come by will make the start even more difficult, but not change the end game because by then you've got speed, resists, escapes and ESP/detection to allow you to avoid any potential danger.

Yes the start would become somewhat harder, but the start is much easier to balance than the end, so if it turned out to be too hard it would be easy to adjust some monsters in the first few dlvls and it would be ok again.

One of the problems with stealth today is that you don't really have to choose it, you can pick all those things you mention, and then get stealth on top. I want it to be an active choice: this game I want to play a stealthy character, so I will get less speed and lower damage output. Today you just get it for free. And I don't agree with you that it doesn't make any difference in the end game.

I'd say a lot of the changes to make the game harder have had this effect. For example now you don't find any artifacts until a certain point and then you suddenly find loads of them, so the game goes from very difficult to much easier in a few levels.

I agree, and I have a suggestion for egos and artifacts:
Change the formulas for how frequent they are, so we get a bit more in the earlier levels, and a lot less in the later. We will soon be able to ensure that egos come at apropriate dlvls, so an increased amount early would be nice to players, and not unbalancing.

For a lot of levels there are many monsters 2-3 times your speed who could kill you in one player turn (sometimes many times over). Then when you get enough speed this danger disappears.

If you want to make the game harder then you really need to create some sort of danger even when the player has good equipment.

One suggestion I made before is creating emergent dangers from monsters affecting each other with haste, heal, buff and clone spells (although I realise this is a huge amount of work).

I've been thinking a bit about that suggestion, and have some ideas, but as you say it would need some coding to get done.