Making the game harder, take five: stealth

[jens]

I've compiled some stats on stealth, using the information Derakon supplied.

vigil	#	sleep	0 stl	6 stl	12 stl	18 stl
100+	22	700	140	560	2240	8960
80-99	72	560	112	448	1792	7168
60-79	51	420	84	336	1344	5376
40-59	76	280	56	224	896	3584
20-39	118	140	28	112	448	1792
10-19	160	70	14	56	224	896
0-9	108	0	0	0	0	0

vigil	: The value in monster.txt
#	: The number of monsters that have vigilance in the given range.
sleep	: The average size of the sleep value (= vigil*2 + 1d(vigil*10)) (using the lowest value in the range for vigil).
0-18stl	: Nr of monster turns you can spend on a level before a given monster wakes up.

In this table I'm using the model that you are walking at a distance of 20 steps from any given monster. This means that each time a monster is disturbed (100/20 =) 5 is subtracted from that monsters sleep value. At 0 stl (stealth), and at equal speed, it would then take 140 turns before a monster with 700 sleep would wake up. Using the stats from Derakon's table a character with 6 stl would disturb a monster on average 25% of it's turns, i.e. on average he could stay 4 times as long on the level. At 12 stl that would be 16 times, and at 18 stl 64 times as long (well actually it's a bit less, closer to 60 at 18 stl, but clean multiples of 2 are nice). The stealth number I'm talking about here is the combined value of 1 + race + class + eq. The range of stealth excluding eq is 0-10.

For ease of conversation I'm designating values close to 0 stealth as bad, 6 stealth as average, 12 stealth as good, and 18 stealth as insane.

Some ways of achieveing these values:

Bad stealth	Naked Half-Troll/Warrior

Average stealth	Half-Troll/Warrior with 2 good stealth items
		Naked Elf/Ranger

Good stealth	Naked Hobbit/Rogue
		Elf/Mage with 1 really good stealth item

Insane stealth	Hobbit/Rogue with 3 stealth items
		Half-Troll/Warrior with 4 really good stealth items

10 vigilance seems to be a breaking point. There are 152 monsters with 10 vigilance, there are none with 6-9 vigilance. So, if you can sneak around a dungeon without waking up monsters with 10 vigilance you are set. If you have good stealth you'll probably have more than 200 monster turns (adjust according to your relative speeds to get player turns) before too many of these wake up. And these are monsters that most would consider very vigilant, and probably not much effort put into stealth.

For eq I consider 4+ stealth to be a really good stealth item; e.g. an elven cloak of stealth, which quite often gets +5 stealth. A good stealth item would have 3 stealth.

So after lots of analysis here are some concrete suggestions:
1) Change the +1 that everyone gets in calcs.c to -2. This would cut in half the time that any current character can spend on a level before waking up monsters. If the +1 is there because it's needed to avoid a negative value in the further stealth calculations a safeguard of (if s < 0; s=0) can be used instead.
A cleaner change would be to simply remove the +1 addition, and instead lower both race and class values with 1 each (but keeping humans at 0). Races/classes could of course be adjusted on an individual basis instead of a blank -1.

2) Make sure that no ego items can go beyond 4 in stealth, and 4 should only be for elven cloaks of stealth.

3) Break up the horde of monsters at 10 vigilance a bit.


These changes would lead to the Hobbit/Rogue having to dedicate to stealth to get insane, but with 1 good and 1 really good stealth item would be sneaking along nicely. On the other hand the stealth dedicated Half-Troll/Warrior would be good at stealth, but never insane. Maybe make it a bit easier for the hobbits/kobolds by letting them keep their stealth, while lowering the other races by 1.

If you feel these changes are too severe, any smaller adjustment would help as well. In my opinion the question is not if we need to nerf stealth, just how much we need to nerf it.

[buzzkill]

@ Timo : DaJ has awake but unaware, I'm not quite sure how it's accomplished.

@ Derakon : How about normal equipment types carrying stealth penalties (regardless of other enchantments). Stuff like iron shod boots and plate mail come to mind as items that should carry large penalties.

[Philip]

Personally I dislike kobolds and would reduce their stealth by one too, simply because they already have quite a few advantages.

[Derakon]

Buzzkill: ehh, that's realistic but IMO not fun. Especially since you could make a reasonable argument for magical gear not having the malus, which makes it more or less pointless anyway...

Kobolds are probably too stealthy right now. Same with rangers.

[Quendus]

After trying some games as a diver, using lots of stealth, one thing that really stands out is how quiet the levels are. It feels both boring, unrealistic, and like I'm sort of cheating.

The reason levels seem so quiet (at least in versions up to 3.1.2; I haven't played 3.2.0 because it doesn't work on MacOS) is a deficiency in monsters' pathfinding skills rather than a lack of supply. If you walk around a level with ESP, you'll have difficulty finding an area with no visible monsters.

However, even monsters which are awake and aware of the player can't find and confront the player because they don't know how to plot paths around things like U-shaped corridors. Things like ethereal dragons and reavers that can pass through walls don't have this problem, so levels that contain them tend to seem more lively. If monster AI was fixed so that they can get past obstacles, this would go a long way towards fixing the OP's problem (provided changes to stealth are made so that enough monsters will be awake).

It also doesn't help that as soon as the player reaches a certain level of power/slaughters enough of a certain monster type, they start to pathfind *away* from the player as default :P

[Tibarius]

a Game is more than just numbers

Greetings to everyone!

As a new member to this forum, i give a big cheer on all the active people here and the dev-team that keeps a game alive and interesting for years i always liked. I played Moria some years ago and was attracted lately again. Looking for the 'most actual' version of Moria i found Angband to be a well maintained and alive game wich developed even further. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this game. I consider myself still newbie in this game. I have tried 30-40 chars, nowadays usually hitting clvl around 25 before i get killed. So i have still to discover a lot of the game. But i thought i give a couple of thoughts to this thread:

1. Sometimes the discussions here in the forum remind me of math-talk. People who know everything talk about fine-tuning numbers. I would like to remind everyone that a game is more than just numbers. I believe this game has a very nice gameplay - which enforces the player to decide constantly. Do i keep this? Do i wear this or that? Don't forget that please. Sometimes i want to play a sneaky thief, sometimes a spell-hurling mage, sometimes a brute force warrior. I think the freedom of choice is something very good in this game. If people want to play a sneaking half-troll warrior, why not? If they require much sneak-gear they will make a tradeoff for it in other powers.

2. If you talk about making the game harder => from my point of view, after countless hours of playing and not hitting clvl 40 once, it is hard enough

3. The first post stated that sneaking up to a group of monsters and killing them one by one would be unrealistic. I think this aspect does not realy matter. The whole setup is fantastic and therefore by default unrealistic. I think the important point is - the game should be fun playing. And for me that means i must be able to identify myself with the character i am playing and that the game is intellectual demanding.

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

Cheers,
Tibarius

[jens]

1. Sometimes the discussions here in the forum remind me of math-talk. People who know everything talk about fine-tuning numbers. I would like to remind everyone that a game is more than just numbers. I believe this game has a very nice gameplay - which enforces the player to decide constantly. Do i keep this? Do i wear this or that? Don't forget that please.

Thats exactly what fine tuning numbers is about, I'm not talking about stealth in particular, but any numbers. If they are not fine tuned then you will have less interesting decisions, since some choice might be clearly better. Using math talk is just a means to an end, in this case to the end you ask us not to forget about.

Sometimes i want to play a sneaky thief, sometimes a spell-hurling mage, sometimes a brute force warrior. I think the freedom of choice is something very good in this game. If people want to play a sneaking half-troll warrior, why not? If they require much sneak-gear they will make a tradeoff for it in other powers.

When I made my first post I had not tried things excessively yet, so I made some general statements. It turns out that the races/classes are pretty well balanced relative to each other. The problem is that all of them are too good. (and even if I could agree with Half-Trolls being quite bad at stealth, I feel it would be more flavorful for them to have a bit lower stealth)

When it comes to freedom of choice people tend to choose what they percieve to be the optimal choice (with some variation to test new strategies). If a given strategy is optimal, then choice is lessened. That is what this thread is about, I want to give players more gameplay strategies and interesting decissions. It should be possible to play a race/class were choosing stealth eq is sub-optimal.

2. If you talk about making the game harder => from my point of view, after countless hours of playing and not hitting clvl 40 once, it is hard enough

The general drive is for making the game harder for the veterans. This does not have to mean it gets harder for newbies. In some cases it might even mean the game gets easier for newbies (as pointed out in another thread were adding a few 'warning' monster would prepare newbies for coming dangers). As for stealth: veterans will know how much stealth eq they need for their character to start being really good at stealth, newbies will not know this. This will affect the choice of eq, so the veteran will gain a big advantage from correct choices, while the newbie might not really get any use out of it (a difference of a few points in stealth from eq does mean a lot for your ability to sneak through a whole level). Reducing the availability of stealth by a few points will penalize veterans a lot more than newbies.

3. The first post stated that sneaking up to a group of monsters and killing them one by one would be unrealistic. I think this aspect does not realy matter. The whole setup is fantastic and therefore by default unrealistic. I think the important point is - the game should be fun playing. And for me that means i must be able to identify myself with the character i am playing and that the game is intellectual demanding.

I agree that realism does not really matter. My main point is that I want the game to fight back. Just walking up to all monsters becomes too easy. The character I'm playing at the moment is not devoted to stealth in any way, it just so happens that he has one +5 stealth item (an Elven cloak of the Magi that he would have used in any case), and being a race/class that does not penalise stealth he achieves good enough stealth to make the game boring.

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

Precisely! But at the moment it's the main attribute of all classes...

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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!!!!!!!!

[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]

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!