Few ideas on.. teleportation

[Timo Pietilä]

What's wrong with vaults not being safe? I think game is lacking situations when you can say: OK, I'm not going there, I will certainly die. Or I might die there but I will try anyway.

First is commonplace and happens all over the dungeon, not just vaults, second doesn't exist. Not if you are good player. Vaults should be hard, but not unsafe. There is a difference there. If GV is safe to get into only after 4000' or so you created more boredom, nothing more.

Part of the reason why some of the GV:s are jackpot is that that's their purpose in the game. You should every now and then get a lucky break and get something that's worth saying "Wow!". GCV especially is such a thing. It's rare, but once you get one, you like it.

[fizzix]

Yes, ironman for most part of the game doesn't have to play without those necessary consumables, yet if he still can clear vaults it means there is too much. And for difficulty, Ironmen players should be last to look into when talking about how difficult game should be. It's supposed to be challenge for insane not as default to make game very likely to be won by them.

Angband has an infinite dungeon, therefore, in standard play there's no benchmark to balance against. Should you have to play levels multiple times? Should you only have to clear 35% or so of levels? Should you be able to get by just scumming for vaults?

Ironman (or forced_descent) at least gives a metric on which to create a benchmark to balance. You can say, if you clear each level once, you will have an N% chance of getting everything you need to win. (I think that chance right now is hovering near 100% for forced descent.) Additionally, this is what we can most easily benchmark with stats. Not that this should be a major motivating factor, but it is a tool we have, and it really does help determine good allocation probabilities for items.

Also, insta-death scenarios are *not* interesting. In fact forced situations are not interesting at all. Here's an example, it used to be that you could be fighting Dwar and he could summon 20 time hounds. That's instant death unless you immediately teleport/banish. That's not interesting. Now Dwar gets a random mix of hounds, he might get 6 hounds one of which is a time hound, one of which is a gravity hound, and 4 you don't care about. Is this easier? yes, certainly. But it's also far more interesting. You don't need to bail immediately, you may not die, but you might risk getting hit by some nasty breath attacks.

Angband still has lots of these forced situations. Especially early on when monsters can breathe for more health than you have. Some are ok, but in general, I don't find these interesting.

[Pete Mack]

In recent years Angband has become more friendly for fast diving players. Monster are more balanced throughout dungeon (no more "forced" stat gain), it's hard to run out of consumables when fast diving, You are almost guaranteed to get all books without repeating levels. Result? Less challenge for fast diving players and no challenge for slow divers. Some of fast divers can win almost every time.

We have too many option which can save player from death even in worst conditions:
!*Healing* & !Life - unless you are fighting too ma
Mass Banishment - unless very low on HP and fighting uniques
Teleport Other - if one monster is source of danger (only mages and priests have 0% .

I think you are mistaken here. Diving is not significantly harder in 3.4 than in 3.0.6. What has happened is that more people have become good at it because the strategy has been better codified. In 2003 there were no dive logs and little discussion of tactics. After Eddie and Cliff posted some epic dives, it became much more popular and accessible.

[eMeM]

I think you are mistaken here. Diving is not significantly harder in 3.4 than in 3.0.6.

I wrote: "In recent years Angband has become more friendly for fast diving players"

When you say you want more insta death,

Was I asking for instadeath? Where? I only said about game being too easy because we have too many options to escape death. I don't like instadeath and that was a reason behind my other topic.

[Derakon]

The high availability of escapes is part and parcel of Angband's wildly-swingy combat. When a single monster can deal 80+% of your total HP in damage in a single round, the player needs to have lots of options to get away from fights (or else lots and lots of full-heal items). Angband with less-swingy combat and fewer escapes for the player would look rather different -- I believe Sil does this.

Generally the devs are reluctant to make changes to Vanilla that necessitate completely rebalancing the game. I can't imagine the playerbase would accept such a reworked game as "true" Vanilla anyway.

[eMeM]

If rarity of these powerful items were higher it wouldn't made game too hard to win. We don't need full inventory of Healings Destructions Teleport Other etc. One or two is enough. 50 is .. there is no tactic choice. Game doesn't force us to spare them for important battles. I can use them every time and still will have a lot.

[Derakon]

But then the question becomes, how long is the player expected to grind for these items? Different players play at different rates, which means they will find different amounts by the time they otherwise feel ready to fight Morgoth. Either the leisurely player (like Oramin) will have the right amount and the fast player (like fizzix) will have nowhere near enough, or fizzix has enough while Oramin has far too many.

This would be solvable if Angband dictated a certain playing pace, but the fact that it doesn't is actually one of its core features.

[MattB]

But then the question becomes, how long is the player expected to grind for these items? Different players play at different rates, which means they will find different amounts by the time they otherwise feel ready to fight Morgoth. Either the leisurely player (like Oramin) will have the right amount and the fast player (like fizzix) will have nowhere near enough, or fizzix has enough while Oramin has far too many.

But surely, if you choose to dive aggresively then you make the decision to expect to fight Morgoth with fewer consumables than is normally considered enough? (Not that I'd know - I'm a crawler).

[Oramin]

As it is, even with my pace, I spend a fair amount of time on 97/98 stocking up on consumables (typically Banishment/Mass Banishment; by that point I usually have enough Healing, etc.) before the last two fights.

[Derakon]

But surely, if you choose to dive aggresively then you make the decision to expect to fight Morgoth with fewer consumables than is normally considered enough? (Not that I'd know - I'm a crawler).

My argument was more directed towards the availability of escapes, and the degree to which you need said escapes depends largely on what certain monsters decide to do on their turns. You can reduce their necessity by not fighting many monsters (and indeed, diving players tend to spend a lot of time avoiding fights), but ultimately you have to kill Sauron and Morgoth, if nothing else, and you have no control over when, for example, Morgoth decides he's going to hit you for 600 damage, then summon powerful undead, then summon uniques on three successive turns. Some AI actions can be dealt with through clever tactics, but not everything.