Few ideas on.. teleportation

[eMeM]

Phase Door
It's one of the best spells in the game. I think current vault room behaviour of PD makes it too strong. I abuse it a lot, maybe game should force me to use other teleports in danger? Then I would have to face monsters I teleported away with teleport other spell.

Teleportation & Teleport Level
I would mix Teleport Level and Teleportation to one spell with random Teleport Level effect 25%-50% of times. You would have to consider every time you use it on level with a lot of cool items.

Teleport Other
Teleport Other as a bolt is OK but I think it should be higher level, much more mana spell, deeper level wand, deeper level rod. Today it's too easy to teleport everything in our LOS.

[fizzix]

Phase Door
It's one of the best spells in the game. I think current vault room behaviour of PD makes it too strong. I abuse it a lot, maybe game should force me to use other teleports in danger? Then I would have to face monsters I teleported away with teleport other spell.

Teleportation & Teleport Level
I would mix Teleport Level and Teleportation to one spell with random Teleport Level effect 25%-50% of times. You would have to consider every time you use it on level with a lot of cool items.

Teleport Other
Teleport Other as a bolt is OK but I think it should be higher level, much more mana spell, deeper level wand, deeper level rod. Today it's too easy to teleport everything in our LOS.

I might be able to get behind a removal of the "no teleporting to icky square" condition if you start on an icky square, that would remove phase door abuse inside a vault. But if so, I'd also like to remove "teleport-to" inside a vault as well.

Teleportation is already somewhat dangerous. Many depths occur after teleporting to a place already injured and landing next to something that kills you. Replacing it with a random chance of teleporting level seems like overkill.

Teleport Other *is* too powerful. But, 40 level OoD vault monsters are also too powerful. Most mid-game uniques are too powerful to handle at depth. Many monsters (undead beholders etc.) are far too annoying to deal with. Summoning is (still) too powerful. The player needs some powerful weapon to deal with these issues. (by the way, unless I'm a mage, it's usually not until late in the game that I find -TO, but maybe I'm unlucky)

[Philip]

I think that teleport level can be moved deeper, or perhaps the wand just made rarer, simply because monsters rarely get out of vaults, mid-game uniques are there to challenge you, make you run away, or reward you for being a mage. By the stats posted by eMeM in the other thread, less than one monster on dlvl 50 (0.5% of 155 monsters) is OOD on an average level.

[Derakon]

I think that teleport level can be moved deeper, or perhaps the wand just made rarer, simply because monsters rarely get out of vaults, mid-game uniques are there to challenge you, make you run away, or reward you for being a mage. By the stats posted by eMeM in the other thread, less than one monster on dlvl 50 (0.5% of 155 monsters) is OOD on an average level.

But enemies that are in-depth are still worthy targets of teleport-away. Consider Kavlax as a notable example; there are plenty of others. They shouldn't be moved deeper -- showing up early makes the dungeon more dangerous even if only by making Teleport riskier -- but they're almost never going to be fought as soon as they show up.

I generally agree with fizzix; if you want to restrict access to teleport-away, then you also have to make monsters much "safer" to fight, which means (among other things) vastly restricting what can show up when. Otherwise greater vaults would never be safe to enter before, oh, 4000', since there's going to be nasty out-of-depth monsters in them and the player won't have the power needed to deal with them. Is that really an improvement over the status quo?

I do think it'd be fine to make Phase Door be able to teleport you within the vault once you've cracked it though (or just if you're already standing on a vault tile). Having it always take you to just outside the vault is pretty abusable.

[Pete Mack]

I dunno. Phase Door is currently the only way to rest while cracking a connected vault. Without it, I would probably stick to disconnected vaults (like GCD), and any vault that allows monsters to come to you (like Diagonal.)

[Derakon]

How do you mean, "only way to rest"? I mean, in the worst case you can just kite monsters away from the vault a few at a time to fight them without getting overwhelmed. I do that regularly with pits, for that matter.

[Pete Mack]

How do you mean, "only way to rest"? I mean, in the worst case you can just kite monsters away from the vault a few at a time to fight them without getting overwhelmed. I do that regularly with pits, for that matter.

This isn't easy to do in more elaborate configurations (like Reward is Worth it.)

[eMeM]

Otherwise greater vaults would never be safe to enter before, oh, 4000', since there's going to be nasty out-of-depth monsters in them and the player won't have the power needed to deal with them.

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.

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 many monsters at same time
Teleport Level, *Destruction* - unless blinded, confused, amnesiac
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% failure)

and

Teleportation - 99% safe without healing before teleportation. With healing it's even more secure. That's why I think teleportation is also too strong.

On a side note we have too many !Speed, !Restore Mana in the dungeon.

[Timo Pietilä]

Teleportation - 99% safe without healing before teleportation. With healing it's even more secure. That's why I think teleportation is also too strong.

I think you overestimate teleportation safety there. If you are already badly damaged teleport from frying pan into the fire is more like 15%-20% chance. Also without stunning protection deep in dungeon every single teleport is instant death risk even with full heath (plasma/impact/gravity hounds).

[Estie]

On a side note we have too many !Speed, !Restore Mana in the dungeon.

By what standards too many ? My ironman characters had to be very careful to preserve those. If you play a mode where you can farm forever, then whats the point of reducing the frequency ? It just takes longer to get the desired amount.

I could see a point in the early game, where each potion of speed basically means a dead early unique. However, while I dont usually feel a lack of !speed (!mana doesnt drop yet), the variance is very high; in some games I have speed boosts to spare, in others I barely see any if at all.

It depends on how fast you proceed I guess; if you stay on shallow levels for a long time, youre bound to eventually find many speed potions (there arent that many potion types that can spawn, so the ratio of speed is high).

[eMeM]

Well, I didn't die from stunning yet. Maybe I was always faster. Nowadays I don't use teleportation more than 10-30 times in one game. Few years ago I used it much more like several times on one dungeon level and don't remember dying in late game but I know it can happen. With other ways to be 100% sure of survival, IMO teleportation is still too safe option. Why did I wanted to mix it with teleport level? Too get 3D feeling in dungeon

[eMeM]

By what standards too many ? My ironman characters had to be very careful to preserve those.

Ironman is meant to be extremely hard. It should be impossible without being one of the best players in the game. Ironman should suffer from not having enough healing, mana, teleportation, speed, resistances holes etc. That's what I was saying there, game became easier for you, and no challenge for slow divers.

[Estie]

Ironman is meant to be extremely hard. It should be impossible without being one of the best players in the game. Ironman should suffer from not having enough healing, mana, teleportation, speed, resistances holes etc. That's what I was saying there, game became easier for you, and no challenge for slow divers.

So are you suggesting my characters found too many of them ? How many did Ifind ? How many should I find ? How good am I as a player ?

Unless you know the answer to all these question, what you are saying doesnt make sense.

Also, your perception of the game difficulty is wrong. Reducing amount of heals does make the game harder, and it requires more skill to get a winner under those conditions to a certain extend; however, this is not a parameter you can change without limit.
If you make too few heals, the optimal strategy changes to something ugly; for example, it may be best to start farming heroism for the heal effect, or resting after every hp loss be mandatory, or something else people may think of. Some of these strategies would probably be called "abuse" by you and it is questionable wether being able to perform them would be a mark of skill.

The art of playing Angband is not so much the skill in deciding the next move. It is rather the ability to avoid very bad moves for a long period of time.

[eMeM]

So are you suggesting my characters found too many of them ?

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.

This discussion really show state of todays game. No one sees problem in possible insta death early on saying game is too easy. OK, i can understand that but also there's no agreement that we should make game harder later because fast divers fear they won't be able to win with insufficient inventory.

[Estie]

Sorry but you lost me, I dont think I understand what you mean.

When you say you want more insta death, how exactly do you want to implement that, without creating "a rock falls on your head; you die" situations ?
For those (by definition) cannot be avoided by skill, yet you want only the best players to be able to win ironman.

Would you prefer the situation "of yesterday" where you can go downstairs in town and get paralyzed by a floating eye at level 1, with unavoidable death ? Thats not something a good player can avoid.