PC Angband 1.4

[d_m]

You mean things like potions and mushrooms, that never fail? Interesting. What will happen when they do fail? Nothing, or an unexpected side effect?

How about 100% success, but not 100% results? Such as, 1 in a thousand potions of life that are watered down, and only heals for 250 points, and doesn't quite cure the confusion, or the teleport spell that doesn't work quite right and only transports you 30 squares.

Yeah, something like that would work.

The key is that there is a chance that things won't go as expected so that it will make optimum play (a tiny bit) less optimal.

Healing less than expected would be fine. For things like teleport-other, teleport-level, or destruction it gets a bit hairier. But I'm sure we could think of something.

[BlueFish]

I wonder how many people in the world actually consider Angband to be "too easy"?

It's not an easy game unless you resign yourself to a play-style that most people find unappealing. Risk is exciting and fun. I don't think most players, even if they know that avoiding all risk is "optimal", choose to play that way.

[bio_hazard]

Yeah, something like that would work.

The key is that there is a chance that things won't go as expected so that it will make optimum play (a tiny bit) less optimal.

Healing less than expected would be fine. For things like teleport-other, teleport-level, or destruction it gets a bit hairier. But I'm sure we could think of something.

Seems like some of those could get a per level counter, so that the more they are used, the more likely they are to fail, or to dump the player on a new level. Once the player leaves the level, the counter resets.
Banish should certainly not be an unlimited-use thing, assuming we think that getting rid of every dangerous or inconvenient monster is munchkinish playstyle.

I wonder how many people in the world actually consider Angband to be "too easy"?

It's not an easy game unless you resign yourself to a play-style that most people find unappealing. Risk is exciting and fun. I don't think most players, even if they know that avoiding all risk is "optimal", choose to play that way.

I agree with this. My recollection of the f-k era versions were that they were so obnoxiously hard that it basically encouraged cheating. Part of that might have been the lack of a friendly forum and spoilers too...

I guess I'd encourage the devs to make sure they are moving towards a more FUN and INTERESTING game, and worry less about hard/easy. V is a little bit painted into a corner since anything particularly novel ends up in a variant. While I understand the desire to keep V "pure", I can't help but think this might not always be the best thing for the game.

[Jungle_Boy]

You might imagine playing dungeon 98 again and again for hours would be dangerous but it isn't as long as you have a 100% effective escape to fall back on.

Actually it's only not dangerous if you have a foolproof escape and USE it!! My problem is a neglect to use my escapes at the right time. One thing that would make the game a lot harder is to remove foolproof escapes, or at least remove the foolproof part.

I like the suggestion of variability in healing or teleport distance, I also thought it might be interesting if we could uncouple hitpoints and breath damage. Then you could make monsters more interesting, ie a glass cannon monster that has a huge breath but little hp, or one that has a smaller attack but a ton of hitpoints.

[Timo Pietilä]

I wonder how many people in the world actually consider Angband to be "too easy"?

It's not an easy game unless you resign yourself to a play-style that most people find unappealing. Risk is exciting and fun. I don't think most players, even if they know that avoiding all risk is "optimal", choose to play that way.

Here is one.

You can play current vanilla very very fast without taking much risks. If you deliberately take risks, then it becomes hard, but that's like playing Quake blindfolded.

What makes current vanilla so easy it is predictability. You don't get surprised anymore (not talking about off-screen instant deaths). There is no wonder about is that "D" there something you can manage or not. You can even predict where you get what, because amount of items that give you abilities that you need is so huge that you will get what you want at about where you want to get it.

[half]

Wow, lots of good ideas on this thread (and in Timo's one too). The dev team really should pick a couple of these and just implement them. Many of them would be very simple to code. Sure the balance might swing back to being too hard for a little while, but isn't that a good way to quieten the critics? In general, don't be afraid to overshoot with the difficulty balance. Aim at optimal each time and you will get there faster than if you try to converge from one side. The worst that can happen is that you just revert the change.

[Magnate]

Wow, lots of good ideas on this thread (and in Timo's one too). The dev team really should pick a couple of these and just implement them. Many of them would be very simple to code. Sure the balance might swing back to being too hard for a little while, but isn't that a good way to quieten the critics? In general, don't be afraid to overshoot with the difficulty balance. Aim at optimal each time and you will get there faster than if you try to converge from one side. The worst that can happen is that you just revert the change.

Because I've viewed scumming as one of the biggest exploits in the game since the day I showed up here, and in all that time virtually nothing has happened to correct it.

Without going back and searching the forums , it's because IIRC there have been some good suggestions that go to eliminating scumming that haven't been considered for implementation, and it's my gut feeling that if scumming were to be eliminated, the method chosen would result in adding in some form of relatively equal compensation to the player. Anticipated net change compared to current difficulty = nil.

I'm sort of getting the impression that people think the devteam hang out on IRC discussing all the ideas on Oook and concluding that we don't like any of them so we'd rather do nothing.

The thing is, every moment of time that any of us has to work on Angband is competed for by a huge list of bugfixes and other tasks (the input layer rewrite, item rebalancing, support for Shockbolt's tiles, dungeon generation, stats, etc. etc.).

It's not that we've consciously decided not to do anything about scumming, it's that none of the viable solutions has ever been implemented by anyone with the time and inclination to do so. Speaking personally, I don't think there has been a consensus in favour of removing scumming (remember the lobbying for a buyout button?) and I've never had a clear idea of what I think would be best done without upsetting too many people, so I've left it alone. I suspect something like that is the explanation why it's never reached the top of anyone's list.

There are a number of other complex issues where lots of good suggestions have been made for improvement but nothing has crystallised into development work yet - LOS/FOV, stores, monster AI, stealth etc. etc. The lack of improvement on any of these is purely a capacity issue, not a sign that the devteam doesn't care about the issues. Take a look at trac.rephial.org to see the ~350 things we currently intend to fix!

This is what github is for. Anyone who wants to publish a branch that nerfs scumming can advertise it here and get some feedback. If it does it in a way which people like, it's very likely to get pulled into a dev version for further testing.

I do plan on increasing item prices though - that seems like a fairly simple improvement.

I also like d_m's ideas for making 0% fail not really 0%, but I will be interested to see if views are divided about it.

[Timo Pietilä]

I also like d_m's ideas for making 0% fail not really 0%, but I will be interested to see if views are divided about it.

I rather keep zero failure as zero failure, but move some of the "failproof" escapes out of that category in spells.

In spells *destruction*, mass banish and banish should never reach zero failure, teleport other should be harder to use, maybe add manacost significantly, priest alter reality is IMO something that could be removed completely (that's basically stair-scum without stairs), and banish evil should also cost a lot (but work every time).

Maybe remove scrolls of mass banish and banishment completely or make them *really* rare, keep the staves and add staff of mass banishment, but make recharging them really difficult even with greater recharging. *destruction* is a bit less "lame" than banishments, even that those don't remove uniques like *destruction*. Maybe make destruction scrolls and staves just very rare.

Of course you could make banishments spell hurt you more than it does now or damage you in other ways, like permanent -1 con for every use. OTOH mage is (or should be) the only one to get those as spell and IMO mage needs to have some big guns in the arsenal in order to be able to survive in first place. Hurting CON could be a bit too much.

Teleport and portal I would keep as they are, because you can move yourself from frying pan to fire with those.

Teleport level-spells should not guarantee you the first move. Make them same as teleport in that way.

Runes of protection should be priest only, and only as spell, remove the scroll and mage spell.

For banishment and mass banishment I thought that you could make that "eat your mana" until you reach zero or there are no more monsters to remove starting from you and circling outward. Maybe 1d4 manacost / monster + 50 or so constant mana. If you try to empty an Demon pit with that then costs 237,5 + 50 mana. If you cast it when you have only little bit mana you don't do much removing.

Staves & scrolls could do the same but only for variable mana without constant -part of the cost, which means warrior could not use them at all. If warrior tries to use one he gets "you don't seem to have any mana" -warning (just like other classes would without mana).

Maybe do that same for banish evil, only LoS.

[fizzix]

I rather keep zero failure as zero failure, but move some of the "failproof" escapes out of that category in spells.

In spells *destruction*, mass banish and banish should never reach zero failure, teleport other should be harder to use, maybe add manacost significantly, priest alter reality is IMO something that could be removed completely (that's basically stair-scum without stairs), and banish evil should also cost a lot (but work every time).

This doesn't help. It just changes the solution to:
1) make sure you fight in a destruction zone, or checkerboard room.
2) use ?phase
3) use non-zero-fail spell. (healing, banishment, whatever)

Destruction isn't an escape. Destruction is to remove difficult monsters from the level. Having it have a large failure chance does not affect its usefulness in this area.

Maybe remove scrolls of mass banish and banishment completely or make them *really* rare, keep the staves and add staff of mass banishment, but make recharging them really difficult even with greater recharging. *destruction* is a bit less "lame" than banishments, even that those don't remove uniques like *destruction*. Maybe make destruction scrolls and staves just very rare.

I'm fine with rarefying banishments. You can't get summons of 30 greater balrogs anymore, which was one of the main needs for banishment. Banishment scrolls are already pretty rare though, but maybe other people scum more than I do?

You can kill Morgoth without banish, it's just painfully tedious.

Teleport and portal I would keep as they are, because you can move yourself from frying pan to fire with those.

Teleport level-spells should not guarantee you the first move. Make them same as teleport in that way.

Do you still get the first move when taking stairs? First moves are specifically to combat packs of hounds that insta-kill any character if they start in the same room. I think I'm the only one that thinks this whole structure is awful for gameplay, and I'd much rather nerf those hound types/packs and remove 1st move in all cases. I don't think many people think like me.

Runes of protection should be priest only, and only as spell, remove the scroll and mage spell.

I don't really use runes much anymore. Scrolls are very rare, are they really a problem?

For banishment and mass banishment I thought that you could make that "eat your mana" until you reach zero or there are no more monsters to remove starting from you and circling outward. Maybe 1d4 manacost / monster + 50 or so constant mana. If you try to empty an Demon pit with that then costs 237,5 + 50 mana. If you cast it when you have only little bit mana you don't do much removing.

Staves & scrolls could do the same but only for variable mana without constant -part of the cost, which means warrior could not use them at all. If warrior tries to use one he gets "you don't seem to have any mana" -warning (just like other classes would without mana).

Maybe do that same for banish evil, only LoS.

These are interesting suggestions.

[d_m]

Teleport level-spells should not guarantee you the first move. Make them same as teleport in that way.

I like this suggestion... I will try to play test this in a branch and see how it goes.

[Derakon]

Destruction isn't an escape. Destruction is to remove difficult monsters from the level. Having it have a large failure chance does not affect its usefulness in this area.

Destruction is the ultimate last-ditch escape in the game. When you're in absolutely dire straits and cannot risk even Teleport Level (because you might end up next to some hounds, first turn or no), Destruction is there to guarantee you at least 20 turns of peace. Sure, whatever you're fighting goes away, as does any loot on the ground, but better that than your life.

Having the banish / mass-banish spells go after your MP is an interesting concept, but I'm not convinced it's necessary (since mages are the only ones to get those spells anyway), and particularly I don't like the idea of making the scroll form impossible for the warrior to use. Angband mages know how to use swords; why shouldn't Angband warriors know how to use magic items?

I'm fine with rarefying banishments. You can't get summons of 30 greater balrogs anymore, which was one of the main needs for banishment. Banishment scrolls are already pretty rare though, but maybe other people scum more than I do?

I'd say I generally find 5-6 ?Banish and 1-3 ?MassBanish in any given game, and I don't scum much at all. My final fights rely a lot more on ?Destruction right now (teleport Morgoth away, destruct to remove summons) than they do on banish, since Morgoth is typically summoning uniques at me, which banish doesn't touch. So making banish scrolls more rare would have a much lesser effect, for me, than making ?Destruction more rare. Though I suppose then the fight devolves to "Teleport Morgoth away, walk over to stash of _Destruction, use staff off the ground". More convoluted and more room for things to go wrong, though, so why not?

Do you still get the first move when taking stairs? First moves are specifically to combat packs of hounds that insta-kill any character if they start in the same room. I think I'm the only one that thinks this whole structure is awful for gameplay, and I'd much rather nerf those hound types/packs and remove 1st move in all cases. I don't think many people think like me.

I would much rather see something like NPP's "stairs are always in safe locations" (safe = in a little nook with nothing having LOS) hack than the "always get first move" hack. NPP stair placement isn't perfect, mostly in that it tends to cluster all of the stairs together, but if that change was just used for the stairs you arrive on then it'd be fine.

I don't really use runes much anymore. Scrolls are very rare, are they really a problem?

I don't use runes much either, mostly because they're expensive and can break without warning, but other people swear by them, so I'm clearly not one to judge their efficacy.

[nppangband]

I would much rather see something like NPP's "stairs are always in safe locations" (safe = in a little nook with nothing having LOS) hack than the "always get first move" hack. NPP stair placement isn't perfect, mostly in that it tends to cluster all of the stairs together, but if that change was just used for the stairs you arrive on then it'd be fine.

I fixed that "stairs clustered together" issue in NPP 0.5.3. The stairs also aren't clustered in the pillar rooms any more.

It still isn't perfect. The dungeon generation code can place a monster out of LOS but right around the corner from the player, then thier escorts or friends can wrap around the corner next to the player. All monsters start with zero energy (and even though a normal movement or attack takes 100 energy, the player or monster has to build up 200 energy in NPP to get a turn), so the monster would have to be 4x faster than the player to get the first move.

[fizzix]

It still isn't perfect. The dungeon generation code can place a monster out of LOS but right around the corner from the player, then thier escorts or friends can wrap around the corner next to the player.

Which is problematic for the one type of monster you care about...hounds.

Hounds, what don't they ruin?

[Timo Pietilä]

This doesn't help. It just changes the solution to:
1) make sure you fight in a destruction zone, or checkerboard room.
2) use ?phase
3) use non-zero-fail spell. (healing, banishment, whatever)

This is wrong how? You need to still be able to kill things. If you remove all "solutions" then game becomes impossible. This solution you just described is creative one, not straight out hit it into head until it is dead, push a button to get rid of annoying summons. Using your environment in your benefit is how this game should be played.

Destruction isn't an escape. Destruction is to remove difficult monsters from the level. Having it have a large failure chance does not affect its usefulness in this area.

Destruction is best escape game has. Guaranteed safety for several turns against anything and in any situation.

You can kill Morgoth without banish, it's just painfully tedious.

It is final fight. It should never be easy and never be tedious even if it takes several hours to complete. An epic fight between our hero and the final bad guy. The fact that you consider it "painfully tedious" just shows how easy game you have used to.

Do you still get the first move when taking stairs?

Yes. Non-escape movements should be safe. Taking stairs is non-escape movement. Or if you are escaping, then it should remain as safe method. Recall and stairs.

Otherwise you end up getting unfair no-defense death sooner or later.

I don't really use runes much anymore. Scrolls are very rare, are they really a problem?

Fighting Morgoth standing on rune makes it much easier. Even if it takes just three or four turns for M to break them it more than halves the damage you get from melee, and in reality it takes much longer than that.

[Timo Pietilä]

I like this suggestion... I will try to play test this in a branch and see how it goes.

In fact also trapdoor should act like that. It is a trap, so you should not have first move. In fact with that you should always start with zero energy in new level.