Nick posted a couple of idea threads, so I figured I might take some time to post some of my ideas. Hopefully in a couple months I'll be able to get back into Angband coding work, so this is sort of my wishlist of things I'd like to try.
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Problem: Food is useless
Why is this a problem?: With the removal of the "gorged" status there is no upper bound to "stomach size" This means that food just becomes a "ensure you don't starve" thing. With plentiful food in town, not to mention satisfy hunger scrolls and spells, this isn't very hard to do. Furthermore, a food clock is opposed to the idea of allowing infinite exploration of the same level. While it might be possible to make hunger a resource to be managed, like DCSS, this is not a terribly interesting mechanic. Hunger in DCSS is more an annoyance than anything else, and it detracts from the game experience.
Possible solution: Remove the hunger bar. Some current food items (rations of bread) disappear. Other food items (waybread, wine) can have buffing or healing effects. If desired, certain powerful food items can be "perishable", meaning that they cannot be carried between floors. This allows potentially powerful food items to be generated with the assumption that they'll be used on that floor and not hoarded.
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Problem: Resistances are unintuitive
Why is this a problem?: Many people wrongly assume that multiple permanent resistance sources will provide more resistance. Since the actual behavior is very different from expectations, we really need a way to either make this clear (currently a long standing desire) or change the behavior. I vote to change the behavior
Proposed solution: Each basic resistance class (fire, cold, elec, acid, poison) has 5 resistance levels. The damage reduction for each level is something like 1/2, 1/3, 1/5, 1/9, immunity. so 2 levels is the current "single resist" and 4 levels is the current "double resist." I'm not sure whether 5 levels = immunity is a good idea, or if we should cap it at four. I'm sort of thinking that immunity should just be immunity to pack damage + 1/9 damage reduction. Gear can have multiple levels of resist. For example, a shield of resist fire could have 2 levels, but a shield of resistance could have 1 level of each of the 4 base elements. Resistance spells can add one level of resistance. For the higher level "elements" (nether, chaos, nexus etc.) I propose that we drop the stupid variable resistance crap and make it a straight damage reduction + immunity to side effects. How much to reduce is undecided, and partially depends on whether we change the next problem.
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Problem: Monster breaths are too powerful
Why is this a problem?: Late game situations are forced. A high level player has between 700 and 1100 HP. This means two full breaths of a high element can kill him. This forces gameplay into not being able to fight two monsters at the same time. Other spells are dangerous too, but breaths are the bigger problem because of their ubiquity.
Proposed solution: Breath damage reduces with distance to the player. It is no longer a ball effect, rather it's a ray with some max distance. Furthermore, monsters do not breathe if there's another monster in between themselves and the player that is not immune to the effect. Lastly, monsters that breathe something are no longer guaranteed immunity. Rather they get 2 resistance levels (1/3 damage), or 1 resistance level for higher elements. Monsters can also get the IM_XXXX flag which does guarantee immunity. This changes a lot of late game combat. It'll take some experimentation to decide whether it's an improvement or not. It might be worth considering nerfing some player ranged abilities to make sure a player can't just kite an enemy.
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Problem: Player utility spells are too powerful
Why is this a problem: Teleport other and destruction both allow a player to remove unwanted enemies from the level or area. Furthermore, once they get access to these spells, the late game becomes trivial and uninteresting.
Proposed solution: If multiple sources of damage are fixed, then it seems a late level player can survive multiple high level monsters at once. Then we can impose stuff like monsters that resist teleport, or areas where teleport is not available. Destruction is more of a problem. I had a patch once which instead of removing monsters from the level, it pushed them outside the destruction zone. So it bought the player a few turns. I propose we bring something like this in the game and also give players negative status effects like heavy stun, confusion (ignore resist) which makes destruction also require consumable consumption. If this path is taken, you will no longer be able to remove monsters from the level short of banishment, so we will also need to limit/weaken undefeatable annoyance monsters (some uniques come to mind).
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Problem: monsters behave boringly
Why is this a problem: Monsters with ranged attacks don't try to use them. There's no way to anticipate powerful attacks like breath spells. An optimized use of spells is out of the question, so some randomness is needed. Nevertheless we can improve on some things.
Proposed solution: Monsters prefer ranged attacks if available. Monsters that are given the RANGED flag do not advance towards @, if they choose not to attack a turn they retreat. If retreating puts them out of range, they stay still. We can steal more advanced monster behavior, like in Sil, but I don't think it's necessary. Let's just make the archer standing in a corridor to be a dangerous enemy that needs to be dealt with.
There are other ideas I have, but this is enough for now.
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Problem: Food is useless
Why is this a problem?: With the removal of the "gorged" status there is no upper bound to "stomach size" This means that food just becomes a "ensure you don't starve" thing. With plentiful food in town, not to mention satisfy hunger scrolls and spells, this isn't very hard to do. Furthermore, a food clock is opposed to the idea of allowing infinite exploration of the same level. While it might be possible to make hunger a resource to be managed, like DCSS, this is not a terribly interesting mechanic. Hunger in DCSS is more an annoyance than anything else, and it detracts from the game experience.
Possible solution: Remove the hunger bar. Some current food items (rations of bread) disappear. Other food items (waybread, wine) can have buffing or healing effects. If desired, certain powerful food items can be "perishable", meaning that they cannot be carried between floors. This allows potentially powerful food items to be generated with the assumption that they'll be used on that floor and not hoarded.
------------------------------------
Problem: Resistances are unintuitive
Why is this a problem?: Many people wrongly assume that multiple permanent resistance sources will provide more resistance. Since the actual behavior is very different from expectations, we really need a way to either make this clear (currently a long standing desire) or change the behavior. I vote to change the behavior
Proposed solution: Each basic resistance class (fire, cold, elec, acid, poison) has 5 resistance levels. The damage reduction for each level is something like 1/2, 1/3, 1/5, 1/9, immunity. so 2 levels is the current "single resist" and 4 levels is the current "double resist." I'm not sure whether 5 levels = immunity is a good idea, or if we should cap it at four. I'm sort of thinking that immunity should just be immunity to pack damage + 1/9 damage reduction. Gear can have multiple levels of resist. For example, a shield of resist fire could have 2 levels, but a shield of resistance could have 1 level of each of the 4 base elements. Resistance spells can add one level of resistance. For the higher level "elements" (nether, chaos, nexus etc.) I propose that we drop the stupid variable resistance crap and make it a straight damage reduction + immunity to side effects. How much to reduce is undecided, and partially depends on whether we change the next problem.
---------------------------------------------
Problem: Monster breaths are too powerful
Why is this a problem?: Late game situations are forced. A high level player has between 700 and 1100 HP. This means two full breaths of a high element can kill him. This forces gameplay into not being able to fight two monsters at the same time. Other spells are dangerous too, but breaths are the bigger problem because of their ubiquity.
Proposed solution: Breath damage reduces with distance to the player. It is no longer a ball effect, rather it's a ray with some max distance. Furthermore, monsters do not breathe if there's another monster in between themselves and the player that is not immune to the effect. Lastly, monsters that breathe something are no longer guaranteed immunity. Rather they get 2 resistance levels (1/3 damage), or 1 resistance level for higher elements. Monsters can also get the IM_XXXX flag which does guarantee immunity. This changes a lot of late game combat. It'll take some experimentation to decide whether it's an improvement or not. It might be worth considering nerfing some player ranged abilities to make sure a player can't just kite an enemy.
-----------------------------------------------
Problem: Player utility spells are too powerful
Why is this a problem: Teleport other and destruction both allow a player to remove unwanted enemies from the level or area. Furthermore, once they get access to these spells, the late game becomes trivial and uninteresting.
Proposed solution: If multiple sources of damage are fixed, then it seems a late level player can survive multiple high level monsters at once. Then we can impose stuff like monsters that resist teleport, or areas where teleport is not available. Destruction is more of a problem. I had a patch once which instead of removing monsters from the level, it pushed them outside the destruction zone. So it bought the player a few turns. I propose we bring something like this in the game and also give players negative status effects like heavy stun, confusion (ignore resist) which makes destruction also require consumable consumption. If this path is taken, you will no longer be able to remove monsters from the level short of banishment, so we will also need to limit/weaken undefeatable annoyance monsters (some uniques come to mind).
----------------------------------------
Problem: monsters behave boringly
Why is this a problem: Monsters with ranged attacks don't try to use them. There's no way to anticipate powerful attacks like breath spells. An optimized use of spells is out of the question, so some randomness is needed. Nevertheless we can improve on some things.
Proposed solution: Monsters prefer ranged attacks if available. Monsters that are given the RANGED flag do not advance towards @, if they choose not to attack a turn they retreat. If retreating puts them out of range, they stay still. We can steal more advanced monster behavior, like in Sil, but I don't think it's necessary. Let's just make the archer standing in a corridor to be a dangerous enemy that needs to be dealt with.
There are other ideas I have, but this is enough for now.
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