Level feeling with 3.3.1?

[fruviad]

I'm playing 3.3.1, and I just found the Phial of Galadrial laying on the floor at 1150'.

The level feeling, however, reports "...there are only scraps of junk here."

Surely an artifact should push the level feeling to better than scraps of junk?

[ghengiz]

I'm playing 3.3.1, and I just found the Phial of Galadrial laying on the floor at 1150'.

The level feeling, however, reports "...there are only scraps of junk here."

Surely an artifact should push the level feeling to better than scraps of junk?

generally speaking, yes.
but the phial can be found relatively easily at a much shallower depth (once I found it at 150' ), so it does not push the level feeling very much at 1150'

[Magnate]

generally speaking, yes.
but the phial can be found relatively easily at a much shallower depth (once I found it at 150' ), so it does not push the level feeling very much at 1150'

In v4 the presence of any artifact causes a minimum level feeling of "you feel there may be something worthwhile here". There doesn't seem to be any controversy about this, so perhaps it will appear in 3.4

[PowerWyrm]

I'm playing 3.3.1, and I just found the Phial of Galadrial laying on the floor at 1150'.

The level feeling, however, reports "...there are only scraps of junk here."

Surely an artifact should push the level feeling to better than scraps of junk?

Level feelings are triggered in respect to item "value", as per "how much would I get from this object if I were selling it to a shop?" Since the Phial now sells for a few coins (thanks to the new pricing system), it is considered as "scrap of junk". Same happens with 99% of wearables now. You'll find out that almost all "superb" level feelings are now triggered by OoD non-wearable items like deep books.

[Magnate]

Level feelings are triggered in respect to item "value", as per "how much would I get from this object if I were selling it to a shop?" Since the Phial now sells for a few coins (thanks to the new pricing system), it is considered as "scrap of junk". Same happens with 99% of wearables now. You'll find out that almost all "superb" level feelings are now triggered by OoD non-wearable items like deep books.

Is it that bad? I've toned down the values of the top-end non-wearables in v4 (things like scrolls of Acquirement were way out of kilter), but I hadn't realised that this was a major issue. Last time I checked, the prices of high-end wearables were in the five-digit range, much like those of high-end books and devices.

[Estie]

Level feelings are triggered in respect to item "value", as per "how much would I get from this object if I were selling it to a shop?" Since the Phial now sells for a few coins (thanks to the new pricing system), it is considered as "scrap of junk". Same happens with 99% of wearables now. You'll find out that almost all "superb" level feelings are now triggered by OoD non-wearable items like deep books.

Really ? That explains alot. I must say I dont like it, as I dont really care how much an item sells for when judging a levels worthiness.

The phial should then be worth more than a !augmentation for example; at least with a warrior, Id pick phial over potion. Also, early game most characters prefer light weapons over heavy ones; while that changes come lategame, its bad that a dagger of frost will go unnoticed while a great hammer of frost will cause a feeling. Whats wrong with simply giving points for low egos (armor of res fire), high egos (of elvenkind) and artifacts ?

[PowerWyrm]

Is it that bad? I've toned down the values of the top-end non-wearables in v4 (things like scrolls of Acquirement were way out of kilter), but I hadn't realised that this was a major issue. Last time I checked, the prices of high-end wearables were in the five-digit range, much like those of high-end books and devices.

The pricing system in current 3.4-dev is badly broken. Especially wearables. There's not enough emphasis on single properties and multiple properties that don't belong to the same category (an item with +1 to all stats will have a price boost, an item with +3 con, fa, res chaos will not...).

[Magnate]

Really ? That explains alot. I must say I dont like it, as I dont really care how much an item sells for when judging a levels worthiness.

The phial should then be worth more than a !augmentation for example; at least with a warrior, Id pick phial over potion. Also, early game most characters prefer light weapons over heavy ones; while that changes come lategame, its bad that a dagger of frost will go unnoticed while a great hammer of frost will cause a feeling. Whats wrong with simply giving points for low egos (armor of res fire), high egos (of elvenkind) and artifacts ?

That's much harder to maintain. If you determine power algorithmically, you can create or modify items to your heart's content and it will Just Work. If you need to update the algorithm to reflect something you've changed, it will be updated for all items.

If you determine power by values in edit files, then every time you create or modify something, you have to edit the values of everything that you've modified *and* everything whose relative value is affected by what you've modified.

Of course, if the algorithm is crap then you're no better off, hence the debate.

[Magnate]

The pricing system in current 3.4-dev is badly broken. Especially wearables. There's not enough emphasis on single properties and multiple properties that don't belong to the same category (an item with +1 to all stats will have a price boost, an item with +3 con, fa, res chaos will not...).

But an item with +3 CON, FA and rchaos will still fetch far more than the same item with +1 to all stats, so what's the problem? The boosts for related properties are to reflect the additional utility of covering whole sets of things with a single item (e.g. rbase, all sustains etc.). It's what makes Anarion correctly valued, and what makes armour of Resistance worth more than 4x armour of Resist Cold.

I think "badly broken" is unduly harsh, unless you are piqued about some specific changes since it was first introduced in 3.1.1. The one perennial problem with the algorithm has been pricing +speed properly, and this seems to have been addressed in v4 without too much controversy. (Speed power in v4 is linear at +20 per point, though prices are still quadratic.)

If you'd like to give me some specific examples of prices in the current dev version that you don't like, I'll happily see if I can improve things before 3.4 is released. "Pricing is broken for all wearables" is too generic for me to be able to deal with, I'm afraid.

[Estie]

Hmm I see; the price is already assigned to an item, whereas a classification as "low ego" or "high ego" would have to be added.

In that case, if the price is really used as power value, wouldnt it be better to actually modify it to reflect the power ? Its not like the distribution of sell values is really important for game balance.

Some weird effects would occur; for example, adamantite plate mail should probably get a negative value, but I could live with that.

[Derakon]

There's an incredibly easy solution to this problem, which I'll advocate one more time and then shut up about: turn off level feelings or make them combined object/monster feelings again. The split into separate level feelings hasn't reduced complaints about inaccurate feelings in the slightest -- they've just gone from "I got a superb level feeling so why didn't I find anything while fleeing from Ancalagon" to "I got a [bad|good] object feeling so why [was there an awesome item|didn't I find anything awesome]".

Object level feelings really don't add anything to the game. They're just a minor amount of flavor and a grossly oversimplified "should I explore this level?" indicator. The answer to that question should always be "yes" -- otherwise, something is broken in the dungeon generator.

Now, personally I just turned level feelings off and never looked back or worried that I wasn't going to find anything on a given level -- and my experience has been that levels are generally worth exploring, so I've done fine. My issue with the larger community is that it feels like we're wasting the devs' time having them come up with accurate valuations (and arguments for why those valuations are accurate) that are only relevant for these level feelings and don't pay off in any other part of the game.

So just turn the feelings off for everyone. Or at least combine them with the monster feeling again so they're impossible to interpret accurately.

[Magnate]

There's an incredibly easy solution to this problem, which I'll advocate one more time and then shut up about: turn off level feelings or make them combined object/monster feelings again. The split into separate level feelings hasn't reduced complaints about inaccurate feelings in the slightest -- they've just gone from "I got a superb level feeling so why didn't I find anything while fleeing from Ancalagon" to "I got a [bad|good] object feeling so why [was there an awesome item|didn't I find anything awesome]".

Object level feelings really don't add anything to the game. They're just a minor amount of flavor and a grossly oversimplified "should I explore this level?" indicator. The answer to that question should always be "yes" -- otherwise, something is broken in the dungeon generator.

Now, personally I just turned level feelings off and never looked back or worried that I wasn't going to find anything on a given level -- and my experience has been that levels are generally worth exploring, so I've done fine. My issue with the larger community is that it feels like we're wasting the devs' time having them come up with accurate valuations (and arguments for why those valuations are accurate) that are only relevant for these level feelings and don't pay off in any other part of the game.

So just turn the feelings off for everyone. Or at least combine them with the monster feeling again so they're impossible to interpret accurately.

I love the irony in that last sentence. If level feelings are designed to be impossible to interpret accurately then they may as well be either random or absent. Given that we now have no selling, a combination of no feelings and no selling pretty much removes the power/pricing debate altogether. Obviously this isn't concluded until we remove the BM and stock only +0,+0 stuff in the other shops.

It would be reasonably simple to provide random level feelings for flavour alone, and not pretend that they were conveying any info. I suspect we'd still get complaints though.

Derakon is, as usual, right - splitting the level feelings hasn't stopped the complaints at all. I'd be completely happy with removing them, if my fellow devs wanted to.

[Estie]

Splitting level feelings might or might not stop complaints, but its untested because it hasnt been done; instead there was a combination of splitting and re-evaluating and the complaints were about the latter part.

That is not to say that I am supporting level feelings in any way; I find them rather useless and agree with Derakon that removal would be a good idea.
However, I do not agree that looking for a way to evaluate items is a waste of time. To the contrary, if that were done, it would further the development of angband in a big way, wether it be done for level feelings or for some other reason - think of the randart code.

[Derakon]

I love the irony in that last sentence. If level feelings are designed to be impossible to interpret accurately then they may as well be either random or absent.

To be fair, the old "superb" level feeling generally told you that there was something significant on the level. Whether that was Feanor or Ancalagon, you didn't know. Thus why I don't have a beef with the old system -- it helped lure people to explore dangerous levels in the hope that the level feeling meant there was loot to be had. Of course you get the same result with no level feelings at all.

[LostTemplar]

How about level feelings, completely independent of monsters and objects. Just room values e.g. greater vault gives superb, normal vault or pit lucky, something like this.