Making the game harder, take five: stealth

[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.

[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?

[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...

[Antoine]

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

I dare you to make it your sig

A.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[dos350]

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!

[Magnate]

dont u people SEE WHERE THIS GAME IS GOING????????????????????

plz no rage!!!!!!!!

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 ....

[dos350]

blah balh blah id really like to see a reduction in availability of experience, its way too easy to get +12 xp or more by killing a brown yeek

dont u people SEE WHERE THIS GAME IS GOING????????????????????

plz no rage!!!!!!!!

[jens]

Actually I'd be happy to see an across-the-board reduction in stealth like you suggested, as well as a reduction in availability of +stealth on items. It's way too easy to get +12 or more stealth from items.

Great :-) Now I can rest easy again. Hmm, or maybe it's the other way around, since you don't have the time, I need to work

But the reason this hasn't reached the top of my personal to-do list is because I see it as secondary to a more important reworking of monster vigilance, waking and aggression/flow. IIRC fizzix was looking into that, so IMO recalibrating stealth can wait until after.

Yes, that does need reworking. While checking up on vigilance I discovered (in: monster1.c) that on the available range 0-255 the middle for the 11 different descriptions of vigilance is for a vigilance > 10. That does not leave much room for maneuvering.

[Magnate]

Well it seems that people don't agree with my suggestion of a general reduction of stealth. Though some have agreed that reducing some instances would be good.

So, after reading the discussion over at the no sell thread, and in particular this post. I've realised that you are all just stuck in the mindset of the mandatory-optimization players you all are

Guess I have to implement it myself and force you all to play three games with it.

Actually I'd be happy to see an across-the-board reduction in stealth like you suggested, as well as a reduction in availability of +stealth on items. It's way too easy to get +12 or more stealth from items.

But the reason this hasn't reached the top of my personal to-do list is because I see it as secondary to a more important reworking of monster vigilance, waking and aggression/flow. IIRC fizzix was looking into that, so IMO recalibrating stealth can wait until after.

[jens]

Well it seems that people don't agree with my suggestion of a general reduction of stealth. Though some have agreed that reducing some instances would be good.

So, after reading the discussion over at the no sell thread, and in particular this post. I've realised that you are all just stuck in the mindset of the mandatory-optimization players you all are

Guess I have to implement it myself and force you all to play three games with it.

[will_asher]

Awake and unaware in DAJ works just like someone mentioned early in the thread: they go toward a random destination and then choose a new random destination when they get there (but of course there's no smell/sound like there is when the monsters are chasing the PC).

I think making noisy actions more likely to wake monsters up (like I had planned for DAJ's future) and have monsters call for help sometimes (like they do in DAJ) would help the problem in a more interesting way and make lowering the character's stealth unnesesary. Characters would be just as sneaky as they are now when walking around, but a bit less sneaky whenever they fight or dig or fall into a pit.
Notice I said _more likely_ to wake monsters up, not automatic. It should still be possible for someone with very high stealth to kill a group of monsters one by one without the others waking up. Unless of course one of the monsters lives long enough to call for help.

[Timo Pietilä]

4. In my imagination sneak is a (if not the) main attribute of thieves.

That would be correct, but who says that rogue is same as thief?

Rogue is a person that doesn't follow the normal social rules, but that doesn't mean that he is a thief, and doesn't have rules of his own. Stealing might be one skillset of rogues, but it definitely is not the only one. To be a rogue requires independence from group, so it would also mean rogue should be the most versatile of the all classes, good at everything, but not master of anything (because he doesn't have a luxury to learn just one profession).

This is a reason why I have suggested that Rangers and Rogue get reversed spell lists. Ranger has too many (gameplay reasoning: he doesn't need any, playing bookless ranger as warrior with good archery still makes rangers easy class), rogue too few (gameplay reasoning: rogues are not good at anything except avoiding things, they should be good at everything, just not best at anything).