Point-based stat distribution is too powerful

[jens]

Would fit well I guess But not for Windows players that use an overhead map, it slows the game to a crawl while resting away the hallucination...

[Starhawk]

As a journeyman player who loses plenty of characters before level 20, this thread is saddening. A nerf like this would end in plenty more of my gravestones attributed to early orcs and their leaders. Probably even to Fang and Grip, for that matter.

[Magnate]

Seconded! We could give Humans 24 points and everyone else, say, 18 or 21 points. I think that fits nicely with the "humans can be anything" theme that is found in many RPGs.

Hey Gabe - if you want to push a commit that does this, I'll put it in a 3.3 RC for testing. Perhaps a different points total for each race, according to how difficult they are? So Humans 24, half-elves 23, elves/gnomes 22, kobolds/half-orcs 21, dwarves/hobbits 20, dunedain 19, high-elves 18 ....?

[Derakon]

Speaking as the person who suggested the basic concept, this seems a bit late to be putting such a change into 3.3. That's just my opinion though. Also, I'd be leery of trying to rank the races too much; I don't think more than three tiers are needed at most (human, high-elf/dunadan, and everyone else).

[Magnate]

Speaking as the person who suggested the basic concept, this seems a bit late to be putting such a change into 3.3. That's just my opinion though. Also, I'd be leery of trying to rank the races too much; I don't think more than three tiers are needed at most (human, high-elf/dunadan, and everyone else).

Ok. As always, s/he who codes it gets to decide the finer details of implementation. If it doesn't happen for 3.3 I don't mind at all - if it does I'm happy to test it (and revert it before release if it's not deemed to be a good change).

[Max Stats]

Now, there's some question as to how much of the game needs to be intentionally forgiving -- where does it stop? 300'? 500'? 1000'? I think you could make reasonable arguments for any of those points. Whatever you end up with, though, unless you can resolve my first point, you're going to end up with a section of dungeon that veterans basically end up skipping, or at least blazing through as fast as possible.

What about some sort of starter dungeon? It could be maybe 3 or 4 levels deep, with the levels being comparable to the "real" dungeon, but no OOD monsters, no uniques, and perhaps whatever the most dangerous "in-depth" monster is for each level could be eliminated as well. Because of this nerfing, EXP awards could be lowered, all equipment found could be no better than lightly enchanted (maybe +2), and the best consumables should not be available. In other words, there should be no incentive for someone who knows the game to try to find a cheap, powerful item. At the bottom there could be a moderately challenging quest monster that can give you a slightly better object when defeated. Once the quest monster is defeated, the starter dungeon becomes unavailable.

After completing the starter dungeon, a character should typically be maybe level 3-5, enough to give a good head start for the regular dungeon. I liken this to the cliche "starter quest" in RPGs that typically involves clearing out an infestation of rats for some paltry sum of gold or a +1 dagger.

[buzzkill]

The notion that the current dungeon is instant death to newbs is absurd. Even standard roller characters can survive given rudimentary knowledge and a sane play style. Newbs who will quit playing because they find the early dungeon is too hard are not an Angband players to begin with (and we should not further compromise our extensive brutal history to try to appease them into becoming such).

Super-powered character and the the willingness of current Angband to hold the players hand teaches bad habits. Dying is how one learns to survive. A forgiving start and inflated stats teach all the wrong lessons and lessen the status of the victor should one ever reach it.

[tony]

The notion that the current dungeon is instant death to newbs is absurd. Even standard roller characters can survive given rudimentary knowledge and a sane play style. Newbs who will quit playing because they find the early dungeon is too hard is not an Angband player to begin with (and we should not compromise our extensive history to try to appease them into becoming such).

Super-powered character and the the willingness of current Angband to hold the players hand teaches bad habits. Dying is how one learns to survive. A forgiving start and inflated stats teach all the wrong lessons and lessen the status of the victor should one ever reach it.

hear, hear!

[dos350]

Why want to change , anything! Please, no rage , sheeeeeeesh

[Tiblanc]

I started playing Angband about 2 months ago, so here's my point of view of a newbie. I killed a lot of characters before level 10 because I had no idea what I was doing. I had no feel of the game. Jellies would drain all my stats before I knew what was going on, orcs would surround and beat me in a bloody pulp and I would generally waste my time by exploring the levels hoping to get some decent gear, gear which never seemed to appear.

That was until I drank the first few stat gain potions. What happened then was I discovered the power growth was exponential after 18. With 2 or 3 potions, you can get from 18 to 18/50+. That's 5 stat point worth. At the same time, the higher you go past 18, the higher the benefits. What happened was my weapon started dealing twice the number of blows in a matter of minutes. Find a shiny new weapon on top of it and the damage output goes from 20/round to 150/round. What was challenging became trivial after a few potions and weapons. That wasn't the case in early levels.

The way I see it, power growth before '1000 is almost flat. You may find a weapon with +5 damage or some ring that gives you better damage and that's it. When you start increasing your stats, it explodes. This gives you no reason to play the early game since you're basically wasting your time for small gains. There's no point in trying to get a Rapier(+5,+5) since a single +Str potion will give you more damage output and is permanent. Reducing starting stats will not fix this since you will need a few more stat potions before you reach the exponential growth phase again. Because stats below 18 have little impact on character power, starting with 16 or 17 will change nothing on the early game difficulty. Player inexperience is the main factor here, not the character generation being too easy.

The problem comes from the fact that a consumable can give you a huge permanent power bonus. Old gear must be swapped to benefit from new gear so there are tradeoffs when going up the power ladder. With these potions, once you acquire the stat, it's yours forever. There is no tradeoff, no choice to make. It's a pure win choice.

If you want to make early game more interesting, I would either :
- Curb down stat power above 18
- Make gear more interesting and required to survive stat gain depths
- Make stat gain potions have a temporary effect instead of permanent
- Include a stat gain component to leveling and reduce the power of stat gain potions
- Anything that flattens power growth at these levels

[Jazerus]

On the other hand, Tiblanc, the exponential power growth is a lot of fun - I'd rather see some way of making the early game part of that curve instead of nerfing the entire game to flatten the curve. Tremendous power growth is a huge part of what makes Angband Angband and not Nethack or Crawl.

[jens]

On the other hand, Tiblanc, the exponential power growth is a lot of fun - I'd rather see some way of making the early game part of that curve instead of nerfing the entire game to flatten the curve. Tremendous power growth is a huge part of what makes Angband Angband and not Nethack or Crawl.

One of the points in my suggestion to nerf the starting stats is to allow the early levels to be part of the curve. As it stands today, adding interesting items to the early levels is hard to balance. If the start was a bit weaker, it would be a bit easier.

[jevansau]

I'd say that the more minor benefits of stat gain < 18 means we should make stat gain potions more effective under 18 and maybe less effective over 18.

I don't think that I've seen any calls for more stat gain potions to be required, but I think flattening the effect so as to give a slightly lower average number needed would be good.

[Derakon]

A flatter curve would be fine by me. Though, since that would mean moving more power to earlier in the curve, we might need to worsen starting stats to have equivalently powerful characters in the early game, which means that stat gain gets extended more.

[Angelus]

I'm not really seeing the motivation in changing the early game...I already find it disproportionately hard relative to the rest of the game, probably 90% of my deaths take place in the before 1000'. I think the later game needs some pretty serious changes to make it more challenging and interesting, but the early game, with most characters, is plenty hard enough. Now, I will make an exception for warriors-the early game for them is far too easy. But then, that's just some class variation-I find they have a much harder mid-game than other classes. And then every class has an easy late-game. (I would define early game as up until maybe finding either an object with speed, or at least 2 good egos/artifacts, and then late game starts when most of your equipment slots are covered by artifacts, and mostly you're just looking for better artifacts to face uniques from dlvl 80+). Usually, if I get a player to dlvl 60 or so, he's either a winner, or he suffers from an extreme case of YASD.

Also, I don't honestly find the first 20 dlvls or so all that interesting-there's not enough variation. Later on in the game, the equipment you find can make a big difference in how you play and what you do, but the first 20 levels go about the same almost without exception.