Playing 3.4.1 after a few years off

[TJS]

You're preaching to the choir. Clone monster is one of those precious tropes that goes right back to Moria. It's a "gotcha" item. It's not supposed to have a use. Debate has raged about removing it for about two decades - precisely because it is useful for farming.

takkaria took out the potion of death, so perhaps in a few more years we can remove clone wands.

On the other hand, if we really increase the rewards for ID-by-use, the status of "gotcha" items will increase. In that scenario I'd make it create about half a dozen clones.

Well my main point is that I don't understand what is wrong with a gotcha item also having an occasional use.

[buzzkill]

It is interesting how much V has to baby people...

The players like the notion of a game where insta death lurks around the corner, but then they comsistently insist on rules changes specifically designed to make the game easier and subvert getting killed if you play carefully. If I had to make a general statement about suggestions for V, it's that 90% are for making the game easier. You don't see variant maintainers entertaining crap like this!

Rant warning: No one ever says, ya know, having instant psuedo and even full ID makes the game easier, so instead lets make the whole ID thing harder to accomplish. I thought that psuedo was sort of riduculous when it took 1000's of turns to occur, but that's the whole point of it. You don't know if an item is good or bad until you use it (or wait forever, or spend resources on scrolls, which out can't do for everything), and if it's a bad item you happen to try, then you suffer the consequences (so you don't try everything), that's the sticky curse. Now that's all gone and is replaced by what? a mass ID spell to make the game even more bland... instant full knowledge... there's a progression here that no one either seems to a) see or b) care about. Why not just a spell that maps and lights the dungeon, ID's objects, gives full monsters knowledge (cause that's next on the list), genocides 'annoyance' monsters, generates vaults, and wipes your ass.

[buzzkill]

Well my main point is that I don't understand what is wrong with a gotcha item also having an occasional use.

Recharging.

[TJS]

The players like the notion of a game where insta death lurks around the corner, but then they comsistently insist on rules changes specifically designed to make the game easier and subvert getting killed if you play carefully. If I had to make a general statement about suggestions for V, it's that 90% are for making the game easier. You don't see variant maintainers entertaining crap like this!

Rant warning: No one ever says, ya know, having instant psuedo and even full ID makes the game easier, so instead lets make the whole ID thing harder to accomplish. I thought that psuedo was sort of riduculous when it took 1000's of turns to occur, but that's the whole point of it. You don't know if an item is good or bad until you use it (or wait forever, or spend resources on scrolls, which out can't do for everything), and if it's a bad item you happen to try, then you suffer the consequences (so you don't try everything), that's the sticky curse. Now that's all gone and is replaced by what? a mass ID spell to make the game even more bland... instant full knowledge... there's a progression here that no one either seems to a) see or b) care about. Why not just a spell that maps and lights the dungeon, ID's objects, gives full monsters knowledge (cause that's next on the list), genocides 'annoyance' monsters, generates vaults, and wipes your ass.

I agree that the game has been getting much easier. I can win the game about 1 in 3 attempts and more if I'm being careful and I'm not even a very good player. My games end more through boredom and giving up than through getting killed in the late game.

I'm all for making the game much harder, but that doesn't mean that annoying parts of it like the old ID system should stay. Perhaps there should be a general rule that if something is made easier or more convenient then something else should be made harder at the same time so that overall the game difficulty either remains the same or gets harder, but never easier.

Some suggestions for making the game harder:

1) Make speed much harder to come by eg. remove boots of speed or my preferred choice, nerf speed for the player meaning that spell failures in increase and your to-hit rating goes down as your speed increases making it a double edged sword. Speed is far far too powerful for the player and the difficulty drops massively when you get enough of it.

2) Stop making resting a catch all solution to recovery. Perhaps spawn dangerous monsters after a set time, although that would probably mean players just rest on the stairs until they show up. I quite like the idea of removing regen for HP and SP entirely, but I'm sure that wouldn't go down too well.

3) Remove stat points/augmentation entirely - no more end-game characters all looking the same. Want that extra dexterity point for another blow when you start? Well you're going to have less hit-points if you manage to get to Morgoth.

Angband should be almost impossible to win even for the expert players.

Recharging

What about recharging?

[Magnate]

What about recharging?

His point about recharging is that the use is not occasional. It's on-demand, whenever you feel like it.

@buzzkill: great rant, btw!

[TJS]

His point about recharging is that the use is not occasional. It's on-demand, whenever you feel like it.

@buzzkill: great rant, btw!

What's on demand? Recharging?

[Derakon]

Regarding the difficulty thing: my hope is that we remove aspects of the game that aren't fun difficulty, and make the game harder in ways that also make it more fun. Certainly we haven't always been successful in balancing the two (that's where 3.2 came from), but when we do manage it, the game becomes strictly better -- fewer sources of annoying difficulty, more sources of interesting difficulty.

Regarding cloning: I really like the idea of the wand spawning, say, 2+d6 clones instead of just 1. You wouldn't need to haste them then!

Some suggestions for making the game harder:

1) Make speed much harder to come by eg. remove boots of speed or my preferred choice, nerf speed for the player meaning that spell failures in increase and your to-hit rating goes down as your speed increases making it a double edged sword. Speed is far far too powerful for the player and the difficulty drops massively when you get enough of it.

This definitely makes the lategame a lot harder -- one of the biggest challenges faced by a no-ego-items character is the lack of speed (Rings of Speed are usable but you want ring slots for everything in that game). The trick is that if players can simply scum for longer to eventually get the speed items they want, then they'll do that and then nothing has really changed except that we've inserted this roadblock into the middle of the dungeon.

What we really need is to encourage the player to proceed even when they aren't fully prepared. Eddie managed this with stat potions by just changing the groupthink, but I think it'll be trickier with speed items; we may need to resort to in-game encouragements.

2) Stop making resting a catch all solution to recovery. Perhaps spawn dangerous monsters after a set time, although that would probably mean players just rest on the stairs until they show up. I quite like the idea of removing regen for HP and SP entirely, but I'm sure that wouldn't go down too well.

Monsters already spawn while you rest, though this isn't terribly evident to the player. Leaving resting in the game while also making it a bad idea for healing is likely to just make players complain about how every level is filled with awake monsters (they won't make the connection between resting and monster spawning unless we make it very explicit).

I'd love to remove resting and passive HP/MP regen entirely (so people don't just walk around to heal), but it'd require some big changes.

3) Remove stat points/augmentation entirely - no more end-game characters all looking the same. Want that extra dexterity point for another blow when you start? Well you're going to have less hit-points if you manage to get to Morgoth.

Of course, current endgame characters all have higher values in every stat than starting characters, pretty much regardless of race/class. A maxed out half-troll warrior is going to have competitive INT with a level-1 high-elf mage.

We could lower the caps, so that 18/*** becomes equivalent to 18/100, say (and stat gain would end at 18 internal). Then it becomes easier to max a stat out but doing so is less valuable.

Angband should be almost impossible to win even for the expert players.

The trick here is ensuring that players are rewarded for playing the game -- which means that even a bad player ought to be able to see something new-to-them in each new game, ideally.

[fizzix]

Now that's all gone and is replaced by what? a mass ID spell to make the game even more bland... instant full knowledge...

Oh will you come off it. How many times do I have to say that this is in my personal version? For me. I'm playing it. Not in V. Not even in v4. My game. I wanted to see how it played so I coded it up. For me!

Get off your reactionary high horse. Surely you don't think that I should be required to play the game that you think is perfect.

[TJS]

Regarding the difficulty thing: my hope is that we remove aspects of the game that aren't fun difficulty, and make the game harder in ways that also make it more fun. Certainly we haven't always been successful in balancing the two (that's where 3.2 came from), but when we do manage it, the game becomes strictly better -- fewer sources of annoying difficulty, more sources of interesting difficulty.

Yes I agree with that and think the changes to identify have been for the better in general.

Regarding cloning: I really like the idea of the wand spawning, say, 2+d6 clones instead of just 1. You wouldn't need to haste them then!

Maybe, but then the accusation of farming monsters will still stand I presume?

This definitely makes the lategame a lot harder -- one of the biggest challenges faced by a no-ego-items character is the lack of speed (Rings of Speed are usable but you want ring slots for everything in that game). The trick is that if players can simply scum for longer to eventually get the speed items they want, then they'll do that and then nothing has really changed except that we've inserted this roadblock into the middle of the dungeon.

What we really need is to encourage the player to proceed even when they aren't fully prepared. Eddie managed this with stat potions by just changing the groupthink, but I think it'll be trickier with speed items; we may need to resort to in-game encouragements.

Yes I can see where you're coming from. The problem is that speed is just too powerful. There's absolutely no draw-back at all from high speed. It even effectively increases your stealth as well. There really needs to be something to balance it somehow.

Monsters already spawn while you rest, though this isn't terribly evident to the player. Leaving resting in the game while also making it a bad idea for healing is likely to just make players complain about how every level is filled with awake monsters (they won't make the connection between resting and monster spawning unless we make it very explicit).

Yeah waiting around makes the level marginally more dangerous, but I can't remember the last time I was in trouble from waiting around on a level too long thanks to spawned monsters. Also people will just rest on the stairs in that case.

Perhaps the amount of monsters spawning and their average depth could increase the longer you stay on a level. Also it might be interesting if monsters could appear out of the staircases so waiting near them is not advisable. In fact that might be an interesting way to spawn them into the level.

I'd love to remove resting and passive HP/MP regen entirely (so people don't just walk around to heal), but it'd require some big changes.

Yes it would probably require a massive overhaul of the consumables. I think things like mushrooms could then be interesting with you having to eat ones with non-desirable effects to regain HP and SP. The mushrooms of debility work well in that way. Also you'd have to dedicate more slots to regaining HP/SP by keeping hold of them creating more interesting choices in inventory management.

Of course, current endgame characters all have higher values in every stat than starting characters, pretty much regardless of race/class. A maxed out half-troll warrior is going to have competitive INT with a level-1 high-elf mage.

Yes exactly, which just doesn't seem right to me. A highly intelligent starting castor is going to have less INT than an endgame HT warrior. Dumb starting characters should suffer bad device skill until the end-game in my opinion. Characters with low strength should have to forego heavy equipment. These are all fun restrictions that suddenly get removed after stat gain. I always think the fun factor starts to fade when you get to stat gain depth.

The trick here is ensuring that players are rewarded for playing the game -- which means that even a bad player ought to be able to see something new-to-them in each new game, ideally.

The problem is that the difficulty is front loaded. At the start of the game you can't see beyond one square with a torch and by the end you can map out the level and see most of the monsters move in real-time with ESP and detect the rest. It's all back to front.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Oh will you come off it. How many times do I have to say that this is in my personal version? For me. I'm playing it. Not in V. Not even in v4. My game. I wanted to see how it played so I coded it up. For me!

Get off your reactionary high horse. Surely you don't think that I should be required to play the game that you think is perfect.

I support ya bro! I make experimental changes to my copy's all the time when I'm not playing serious, just to see if its more fun and challenging, some people have gotten so teed off over the years they want to rant nowadays.

[Malak Darkhunter]

@ buzzkill 3.4 is much harder than 3.2 was with less good objects being generated and fuzzy detection, the game HAS gotten more difficult than it was a couple years ago, they are moving in the right direction.

[Magnate]

What's on demand? Recharging?

I'm not quite sure why this is proving so difficult to communicate.

A few posts ago, you said "I don't understand what is wrong with a gotcha item also having an occasional use". Let's say there's nothing wrong with that.

If you can recharge the item, its use is no longer occasional, it's whenever you fancy recharging it and using it. Your "occasional" use has become my "on-demand" use.

My point is that I agree with your original point, but submit that this does not apply to rechargeable items.

[Magnate]

Oh will you come off it. How many times do I have to say that this is in my personal version? For me. I'm playing it. Not in V. Not even in v4. My game. I wanted to see how it played so I coded it up. For me!

Get off your reactionary high horse. Surely you don't think that I should be required to play the game that you think is perfect.

But you're a dev - you might CHANGE something, and that would never do!

[TJS]

I'm not quite sure why this is proving so difficult to communicate.

A few posts ago, you said "I don't understand what is wrong with a gotcha item also having an occasional use". Let's say there's nothing wrong with that.

If you can recharge the item, its use is no longer occasional, it's whenever you fancy recharging it and using it. Your "occasional" use has become my "on-demand" use.

My point is that I agree with your original point, but submit that this does not apply to rechargeable items.

It's occasional because the chances of picking it up and foregoing a slot long enough to find a monster you want to clone is very low. Then you would need to keep a stack of recharging for a warrior or use up valuable mana if you're a castor. Then you have to find the monster in an area that isn't too dangerous and use it there.

The chances of all these being conditions being true are much lower than say finding an orc pit or a dragon pit with the appropriate immunity at a deep level, and these don't take up a precious inventory slot or two and are far less dangerous to the player.

I also don't agree with the idea that anything that is rechargable is essentially free. Otherwise why would there be limited charges at all, since it is apparently trivial to charge them up at no cost to the user. Also for a game of inventory management saying something that takes up 1-2 slots that has marginal use is free is not true either.

[Magnate]

Ok, now we're talking!

It's occasional because the chances of picking it up and foregoing a slot long enough to find a monster you want to clone is very low. Then you would need to keep a stack of recharging for a warrior or use up valuable mana if you're a castor. Then you have to find the monster in an area that isn't too dangerous and use it there.

The chances of all these being conditions being true are much lower than say finding an orc pit or a dragon pit with the appropriate immunity at a deep level, and these don't take up a precious inventory slot or two and are far less dangerous to the player.

Well yes. IMHO the argument "this mechanic is less broken than this other one" is not a strong one.

I also don't agree with the idea that anything that is rechargable is essentially free. Otherwise why would there be limited charges at all, since it is apparently trivial to charge them up at no cost to the user. Also for a game of inventory management saying something that takes up 1-2 slots that has marginal use is free is not true either.

You're now knocking down an argument I didn't make. I've never said that it's free, I said it's "on-demand" - the key part being the comparison with something that has finite uses and cannot be recharged (e.g. if it was a scroll instead of a wand).

I agree that recharging is not free - although I dismiss mana cost as a triviality, inventory space is indeed a cost, as is the risk of the recharged item blowing up. But IMO they both pale into insignificance beside not being able to recharge it.