I have returned... (warning, possible spoiler talk)

**ghengiz** · February 2, 2012, 10:16

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

and i did... finally.... once i figured out i needed good resistances.... I'm not uploading a screen etc because I'm not suicided yet...

No need to suicide...just go to 'C'haracter screen and then dump it (there is an option).

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

1) experience became meaningless for my dunadan mage, around 3500' deep... this is actually a huge problem for the fun factor of the game as level advancement was thrown out the window for the latter/harder portion of the game...

I don't mean to sound harsh, but it was to be expected: Dunadan have the heaviest exp penalty of all races

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

I have decided that a possible fix could be (because numbers of monsters fought will vary so much between players and games)... the fix could be... making certain character level advancements (like level 41-50) require reaching certain depths... like need to reach 3500 feet to get to character level 41... etc....

mmm.. I see no reason to force that...you can always just dive aggressively

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

3) i think i ended the game with like, 10,000,000 gold or something... i'm not sure but if the gold coins were the size of an american little dime, i think i was carrying about 500,000 pounds on my back, the latter part of the game....

but oh my gosh did that extra 1 pound of armor slow me down...

you get what i'm getting at... this whole 500 thousand pounds of gold i'm lugging around (more i think even) is sort of ... dumb... it'd be good if somehow you could rethink the money system solely just to get rid of such a glaringly stupid part of the game...

You could have a point here...the tought of not-weighting money has disturbed me a bit, but I solved it in a very simple way: imagine it being put in the Tolkien equivalent of a credit card or check every time you go to town

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

7) i get the idea of "oh my gosh the thief stole a ton of my gold"... and letting us find him and take it back.... but.... this really makes thieves so less scary a thing to fight.... i think gold should disappear forever... in fact i know it's more fun/aggravating/tense that way.... currently, they are just a seriously mild nuisance

If you want your gold disappear, don't kill the thief

Seriously, would you like a thief stole you an artifact (not sure if they can, it has never happened to me), and then it is gone forever?

The present behaviour is a bit more realistic IMO

edit:
On a second read, I have a few more comments for you.
Just to be clear: each one is plain or at most a bit sarcastic. In no way I mean to sound harsh.

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

2) the AI needs to be tweeked... make pathfinding much larger for certain monsters.... I say this because I beat the game by splash damaging morgoth with mana storms... all cuz I was 7 squares or something from him and he was too dumb to travel 1 extra square around a corner.... i believe he was confused because i was in a vault, and he was not....

I could refuse to pull such things but I'm a firm believer in not limiting myself just because a game has a drawback mentally...

No one says you should limit yourself, play as you like.
If you consider a mental drawback the possibility to kill The Big One with mana storms from an advantageous strategic position, why don't you act really smart and melee him with your mage?

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

4) round and round and round i go.... yeah... pillar dancing... i think i killed like, 1/4 the uniques by doing this.... and why wouldn't i? The alternative is having some guy summon 10 things, that will summon ten things... yeah... not gonna happen...

here you like pillar dancing because the alternative, you say, is too much summons...

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

i think a work around for this temptation would be to redo the way time is done in the game... so that it's not so easy for a character to max out above almost everything else... enabling pillar dancing....

by maxing out speed to a level a TON of other uniques reach, you would no longer get the jump on the uniques and eliminate the ability to pillar dance...

...but here you don't, and moreover you suggest a stringer cap on speed??

this last point is arguable, but consider this: speed already has diminishing returns, and, if you don't like it (I cannot understand why, but respect your opinion) don't wear objects which gives you +speed.

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

this would need to be balanced by downgrading the ability for creatures to summon so many units... or, at least more great summoners...

here I'm confused...probably I'm misunderstanding you, are you suggesting you want less creatures for summon, and at the same time more great summoners?
or just nerf -you say "more", but probably you mean "most"- of the great summoners?

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

5) ummmm.... sauron ... a genie coming out of a bottle? .... seriously? ... someone please alter that please because playing allllll that time just to have sauron be a stupid genie, was so untolkien and soooooooo anti climactic....

seriously way out of place...

I have never ever heard that nickname for Sauron...Why you call him a genie out of a bottle? no really, I'm curious

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

8) I think it would be possible... easily.... to do something along diablo 2 style...... and that... is once you finish the game, your character will restart, level 1, with all damage, hp's, armor etc, of ALL enemies in the game, being jacked up a certain percent.... and you can play the game in "nightmare" mode.... and after that... hell mode (which should be all but impossible... a great feat if you can even get to dungeon level 12 without getting your face blasted off).... possibly allow a few items to be chosen from the endgame before you restart...

I think this would add some serious kick to the game...

well, probably...
If you can program, may I suggest you start your own variant with all the changes you propose?

**ekolis** · February 2, 2012, 19:08

Originally posted by ghengiz

I don't mean to sound harsh, but it was to be expected: Dunadan have the heaviest exp penalty of all races

I think he was talking about the opposite problem: clvl maxes out at 50, while the dungeon goes to level 99, and it's possible to achieve clvl 50 while still having many dungeon levels left to conquer...

**Tiburon Silverflame** · February 2, 2012, 19:10

It would basically be no fun to worry about the weight of money. Encumbrance is already a major issue, by design. And while in the endgame, money's largely meaningless, it's useful for the early phases, when maybe you can get lucky in the weapons shop or black market. There has been discussion about eliminating item selling, but some money is necessary.

On experience: as was noted, this is strongly related to your descent speed. The max depth you can handle, is strongly influenced by the toys you've accumulated. People have won the game with level 45 characters...and I'm fairly sure, not just those who use the deep-dive strategy. If your strategy tends to be clear most levels, then you can easily be level 45 by DL 70. Once you're happy with your gear, tho, you can skip boring or excessively deadly (read: graveyard) levels and continue down.

**bunnies** · February 2, 2012, 19:19

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

1) experience became meaningless for my dunadan mage, around 3500' deep... this is actually a huge problem for the fun factor of the game as level advancement was thrown out the window for the latter/harder portion of the game...

Experience became meaningless, does that mean:
a) You hit 50 before 3500', and extra experience was wasted?
b) You were 40ish at 3500', but the xp gain was so crap it felt meaningless(Dunadan mages have very high xp penalty), and the tangible benefits of leveling up at higher levels werent as positive as compared to lower levels(not many new spells gained)

If a), I'd say play more aggressively and dive, it makes for a more fun and interesting game, especially when you're stretched to the limit of your resources

.
If b), I agree somewhat, the most important aspect of levelling at higher levels for mages are decreased spell failure rates and increased spell damage, which doesnt provide as much positive feedback during the early levels when you're picking up new spells almost every levelup from 1-17(at 18/60 int), although the whole system feels pretty balanced to me atm.

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

you get what i'm getting at... this whole 500 thousand pounds of gold i'm lugging around (more i think even) is sort of ... dumb... it'd be good if somehow you could rethink the money system solely just to get rid of such a glaringly stupid part of the game...

no i'm not trying to be rude... just saying... it's time angband got slightly more real in this department...

Its an abstraction; games sacrifice realism and flavour for the sake of game design. If you made coins weigh or take up inventory space, it'd greatly impact the game design in multiple ways. There are *many* games which don't do that, Diablo being one of them(I assume you played this, cause you quoted it).

In Diablo, you pick up hundreds and thousands of thousands of gold coins; it's just a number. It doesn't take up inventory space, neither does it weigh your character down. Where does he store the gold on his person? Maybe in a magical pouch, I'm not sure if that's in Diablo lore. Thats one of the ways game designers explain away these things - with lore. Maybe Angband could do the same?

And its not just with monetary systems; games generally don't force you to press a button every few seconds for your character to breathe, neither do they require your character to take a piss every now and then, they abstract it away. But Angband DOES do one thing different from others - our heroes need to eat, or they starve and die.

Sometimes called the ticking time bomb mechanic, I feel it makes sense in severely resource constrained environments like Rogue, or an Angband Ironman game, but it feels... mildly annoying in a normal game, especially since food is so readily available. Not sure if v4 is handling this..

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

7) i get the idea of "oh my gosh the thief stole a ton of my gold"... and letting us find him and take it back.... but.... this really makes thieves so less scary a thing to fight.... i think gold should disappear forever... in fact i know it's more fun/aggravating/tense that way.... currently, they are just a seriously mild nuisance

In previous versions the gold disappeared forever; this is the first version I've played where the gold could be retrieved. I feel this adds dimension to the gameplay, because you have to ask yourself: do I ignore him and carry on downwards, or do I seek him out and get my gold back, hoping I don't run into the OOD monster prowling the level, or the pack of Time Hounds that spawned while I was searching for the thief; the game puts you in a risk/reward scenario, and forces you to make a decision.

Then again, gold only makes sense in the early/mid game, and losing 5k gold to a thief in the early game doesn't matter when you end the game with 5mil gold, but that's another issue

Theres probably a ticket in v4 to deal with the end game gold problem though, so not to worry. The way I see it, thieves deal "gold" damage, but at high enough dexterity, its the equivalent of being immune. Maybe if they had a way of stealing consistently at range, and at large amounts(10-20%), and if there were some element in the game which requires you to keep using substantial amounts of gold through to endgame...

**Prismatic** · February 2, 2012, 19:26

In the original Diablo, money actually did take up space and fill up your backpack.

They got rid of that for later games because it was annoying as hell.

**bunnies** · February 2, 2012, 19:46

Originally posted by Prismatic

In the original Diablo, money actually did take up space and fill up your backpack.

They got rid of that for later games because it was annoying as hell.

Yup sorry I meant Diablo II.

**Estie** · February 2, 2012, 23:56

1. From your suggested fix, I have to assume you were level 50 by the time you reached 3500. Typically, my mages are around level 30 at that depth and kill Morgoth before reaching 50. Its a matter of play style, but getting that many levels that shallow is by no means common nor the best approach to winning.

2. Fighting M on a level with a permanently walled vault is indeed easy. However, it is not common and I dont know how hard it would be to improve M´s pathfinding; afaik, labyrinths are a serious problem for ais outside Angband as well. It would be an option though to not allow any vaults on level 100, but that also would be a bit artificial. I think I rather live with the occasional easy mode.

3. What you carry your money on your body ? I prefer to keep it in my home :P

Anyway, you can either suspend disbelief or force an (imo) pointless game of micromanaging gold coins.

4. Pillar dancing would indeed be fixed by having faster monsters than @, but that would require a greater rebalance than just reducing the (admittedly excessive) summoning abilities. Some people voluntarily refrain from dancing.

Hmmm I wonder...I am pretty sure there is code in the angband borg to detect periodic behaviour, could that be used to make monsters break the pillar dance ? At least for the more intelligent ones.

5. Huh ?

7. Maybe, but you already have trouble imagining gold coins you picked up magically transferred to your house, so how can you not mind them being magically removed ?

8. There are various ways to increase the difficulty, and no need to require a playthrough on "easy" first to qualify for them. Just play ironman with your next character

**will_asher** · February 3, 2012, 01:38

Originally posted by Estie

2. Fighting M on a level with a permanently walled vault is indeed easy. However, it is not common and I dont know how hard it would be to improve M´s pathfinding...

This is actually very easy to fix (although I'm not sure my fix is nice and neat enough for the hackhaters). I added this function to melee2.c in DaJAngband to address that problem:

Code:

/* finds whether a monster is near a permanent wall
 * this decides whether PASS_WALL & KILL_WALL monsters 
 * use the monster flow code
 */
static bool near_permwall(const monster_type *m_ptr)
{
	int y, x;
	int my = m_ptr->fy;
	int mx = m_ptr->fx;
	
	/* if PC is in LOS, there's no need to go around walls */
    if (projectable(my, mx, p_ptr->py, p_ptr->px)) return FALSE;
    
    /* PASS_WALL & KILL_WALL monsters occationally flow for a turn anyway */
    if (rand_int(100) < 2) return TRUE;
    
	/* Search the nearby grids, which are always in bounds */
	for (y = (my - 2); y <= (my + 2); y++)
	{
		for (x = (mx - 2); x <= (mx + 2); x++)
		{
            if (!in_bounds_fully(y, x)) continue;
            /* vault walls are always FEAT_PERM_INNER */
            if ((cave_feat[y][x] == FEAT_PERM_INNER)) return TRUE;
		}
	}
	return FALSE;
}

then near the beginning of get_moves_aux() :

Code:

	/* Monster can go through rocks */
	if ((r_ptr->flags2 & (RF2_PASS_WALL)) || (r_ptr->flags2 & (RF2_KILL_WALL)))
	{
         /* still have to go around permanent walls */
         if (!near_permwall(m_ptr)) return (FALSE);
    }

**Derakon** · February 3, 2012, 02:34

4GAI fixes pillardancing, IIRC. It'll probably end up in v4 at some point, but we need monster mana first...and possibly to rethink how the monster healing spell works.

**meJustmeNotyou** · February 3, 2012, 04:58

hey

I ADDED 1 PROBLEM (at the end, banish) AND RESPONDED TO EVERYONE ELSE'S COMMENTS, IN THIS 1 POST...

SAURON... perhaps my tiles were in error... I guess a lot of you don't use tiles, or, the tiles i use... I used, ummm, i forget, haha... david's i think.... sauron is a genie coming out of a bottle in those tiles... that is what i meant by it was lame etc and should be changed.

CLVL 50.... 2 responses in 1 here. My reaching Clvl fifty would have been even sooner had i not been dunadan. If i were human I assume i'd have hit it by 3000' deep.

I really hope you will reconsider just accepting things as is for the future of this game, as far as experience gaining goes.

Some of you are all about iron man etc, delving etc super fast. You don't give a damn about experience really in that i think it'd be cool for you to delve deep so fast and kill morgoth with a level 12 character if you could.

I'm just saying that, level gaining really is part of the fun of this game, and to have levels max out, with just normal play, so soon (level 3500 or something for me), seems a waste.... allllll those dungeon levels to go and experience gaining at that point is... rather meaningless.

revamping exp gains would be too hard... which is why i suggested a level gain to dungeon depth minimum, fix.

Doesn't have to be implemented, but something should be implemented so experience, like with gold, doesn't become a completely insignificant thing in the latter portion of the game.

SPEED... i mention that as it's the only way to handle the pillar dancing etc, without a major revamp of coding. One of you mentioned just don't get speed items then. It's not good to force players to handicap themselves. By having speed max be more of a common thing for uniques, you won't be able to pillarize them... A simple fix.

GOLD... i know this is a game... everything doesn't have to be "real"... it's just, 15 million gold, is too, not real, to have been a good idea from the beginning of this game. It will be hard to change i know, because of item pricing etc, but, maybe a simple fix could include...

just simply dividing the amount we find, by a large number.... i wouldn't even blink an eye if i was lugging around 15000 gold... it's a game... but 15 million just feels extra wrong.

And yes, having gold disappear (when thieved) is just so much better to me... knowing all i have to do is run around and find some dumb thief to get it all back, makes getting stolen from just, no big deal at all. I'd love it to be a big deal...

OR... make it a birth option? (stolen gold = gone forever).

UNIQUES... yes i meant let uniques summon the same numbers of monsters just not summon major summoners. At least, not as often. This was ONLY needed if pillar dancing was to be eliminated. THOUGH i really wouldn't mind just having to flee levels if needed so, either way i don't care i guess.

DIABO (2)... I wasn't saying this is needed... I just came up with it because, when the game is over... ummmm... then what? Nothing... we play again or not at all.

The idea of restarting at level 1, with a few chosen items taken with you, and everything is now very much harder, is just an idea that would allow people to continue their characters... if they chose to.... right now there really isn't much of a choice other than delving deeper and deeper through levels that can't kill you, or suiciding.

------------

ADDING ANOTHER PROBLEM....

banish... i think banish, especially in book form, is probably 1000 times as powerful as anything else in the game, and i think it should be limited.

Once i got banish in a book, i decided to really think about using it... and every dungeon after that, however hard, was easy at that point... only Morgoth was hard (till he was stuck in a strange AI problem).

oh nooo hounds all over (banish).... oh nooooo demons were summoned and i'm in a room full of them.... (teleport/banish)

everything was easy... now i could have again self limited but... that's not good for us to have to do.

So yeah, i banished whatever didn't interest me... whatever level had no artifact at start, almost always... banish, thin the heard, i win.

Fix could be....... make banish hurt you more HP wise, but banish only, 40% of creatures per banish.

banish radius spell, lower radius.

destruction, lower radius,

all same reasons.

Banish being 1000 times as powerful as anything else in the game, as is, is just too much of a game changing, imbalancer.

(i forgot to mention banish when i wrote the first post).

I had a fun time... i like the lore etc of the game... great feel...

But when i got the last book (mage), and experience became worthless, and level gaining was no more... really it was just a race to the bottom.

It lost it's luster and I just hope these (what i call) problems, dont' always exist in the game, which is why i've written them out...

just my opinion (though most is pretty much fact).

Bye

**Derakon** · February 3, 2012, 05:23

A couple quick notes.

1) Mages are the only class to get Banish or Mass Banish in their spellbooks. Everyone else has to rely on scrolls, staves (which don't get Mass Banish and are very hard to recharge), or artifact activations (requires finding the right artifact, of course). Banish and Mass Banish are basically your reward for surviving the early and mid game, when mages are incredibly fragile and don't necessarily have all that great of an offense. That said, several more classes get Word of Destruction as a spell and it's pretty dang abusable.

2) Experience levels are, first and foremost, a way for players to choose how hard they want the game to be. Those who want a harder game can dive when they're not ready; those who want it to be (a bit) easier can slow things down. Ultimately of course gaining experience is not going to be enough to win the game though.

I don't see how you can come up with a scale that ensures that experience is meaningful for everyone throughout the entire game. As noted earlier in the thread, plenty of our more aggressive players win well before hitting level 50, while you, playing one of the slowest leveling race/class combinations in the game, hit level 50 while still having 30 dungeon levels to go. That's a pretty huge disparity. If we tweaked things so that your playstyle resulted in you hitting level 50 at dungeon level 99, then the more aggressive divers would find themselves being held back by the need to grind for experience (because ultimately, you really do need most of your levels to be able to survive deep down).

**meJustmeNotyou** · February 3, 2012, 05:54

Originally posted by Derakon

A couple quick notes.

1) Mages are the only class to get Banish or Mass Banish in their spellbooks. Everyone else has to rely on scrolls, staves (which don't get Mass Banish and are very hard to recharge), or artifact activations (requires finding the right artifact, of course). Banish and Mass Banish are basically your reward for surviving the early and mid game, when mages are incredibly fragile and don't necessarily have all that great of an offense. That said, several more classes get Word of Destruction as a spell and it's pretty dang abusable.

2) Experience levels are, first and foremost, a way for players to choose how hard they want the game to be. Those who want a harder game can dive when they're not ready; those who want it to be (a bit) easier can slow things down. Ultimately of course gaining experience is not going to be enough to win the game though.

I don't see how you can come up with a scale that ensures that experience is meaningful for everyone throughout the entire game. As noted earlier in the thread, plenty of our more aggressive players win well before hitting level 50, while you, playing one of the slowest leveling race/class combinations in the game, hit level 50 while still having 30 dungeon levels to go. That's a pretty huge disparity. If we tweaked things so that your playstyle resulted in you hitting level 50 at dungeon level 99, then the more aggressive divers would find themselves being held back by the need to grind for experience (because ultimately, you really do need most of your levels to be able to survive deep down).

well.. no... the aggressive players wouldn't be held back.

2 scenarios...

1) my kind of player that wants to gain levels throughout the game, with experience therefore mattering throughout the game. Well... this would suit my kind.

2) you're worried about the aggressive players, deep delvers etc... well, in current game form they still would reach the bottom way before Clvl 50... and if they wanted to actually be level fifty, they'd just have to level up... in the new way they wouldn't be able to actually hit level 50, until they physically landed at 4800' or deeper... i don't think it's such a bad idea... they're deep delving anyway.... not like they'd have to wait around for anything.

though maybe you meant something i just am not understanding.

**ghengiz** · February 3, 2012, 09:08

Originally posted by Derakon

I don't see how you can come up with a scale that ensures that experience is meaningful for everyone throughout the entire game. As noted earlier in the thread, plenty of our more aggressive players win well before hitting level 50, while you, playing one of the slowest leveling race/class combinations in the game, hit level 50 while still having 30 dungeon levels to go. That's a pretty huge disparity.

+1

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

well.. no... the aggressive players wouldn't be held back.

2 scenarios...

1) my kind of player that wants to gain levels throughout the game, with experience therefore mattering throughout the game. Well... this would suit my kind.

2) you're worried about the aggressive players, deep delvers etc... well, in current game form they still would reach the bottom way before Clvl 50... and if they wanted to actually be level fifty, they'd just have to level up... in the new way they wouldn't be able to actually hit level 50, until they physically landed at 4800' or deeper... i don't think it's such a bad idea... they're deep delving anyway.... not like they'd have to wait around for anything.

though maybe you meant something i just am not understanding.

I'll then try and explain a bit more what Derakon means, as I understand it:

the main issue with your proposed revamp of exp system, IMO, is that then, at a given depth, and maintaining the same speed of delving,a character would have a clevel lower than the one one s/he has now, and therefore, unless one is seriously grinding for experience, less hp and mana than now (you would gain complessively less hp and mana from level up's), and you need them to survive, in particular if you dive fast.
sure, there are mains to gain con, but still...

edit:added citation of Derakon

**buzzkill** · February 3, 2012, 15:27

Originally posted by meJustmeNotyou

SAURON... perhaps my tiles were in error... I guess a lot of you don't use tiles, or, the tiles i use... I used, ummm, i forget, haha... david's i think.... sauron is a genie coming out of a bottle in those tiles... that is what i meant by it was lame etc and should be changed.gh most is pretty much fact).

No, everything is correct. For some reason, which I can't begin to fathom, Sauron's tile is that of a genie emerging from an 'Aladdin style' lamp. I'll correct this in UT32. Until then, it's easy to remap a tile.

1. Open angband/lib/pref/graf-dvg.prf with any text editor (notepad).
2. Navigate to Sauron (Ctrl-f, sauron).
3. Change his address to 0x95:0xC9 (or any other tile you find suitable).

Yep, that particular tile is already used by another deep unique. But what are the odds that they'll show up on the same level at the same time

.

I have returned... (warning, possible spoiler talk)

I have returned... (warning, possible spoiler talk)

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