Silly idea for expert players (not me)

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  • Mark
    Adept
    • Oct 2007
    • 130

    Silly idea for expert players (not me)

    Randarts keeps the game varied for long-term players. (I've never used it myself)

    The greatest cause of death for junior players is lack-of-knowledge-of-what-can-kill-you.

    A really interesting and crazy equalizer for hardcore players could be "randMonsters", or at least "RandUniques" (except a very few)! Has any variant explored this possibility?

    I wonder how many 'Kavlax' types the RNG would throw at you each time!?
  • Estie
    Veteran
    • Apr 2008
    • 2347

    #2
    It would be pretty boring. You just randomly die, its the "a rock falls on your head" type of hard.

    The game is interesting when you make decisions based on risk evaulation; in a room, target down the breeder first before it wakes up, in a vault, dont open the room with Ancalagon inside. With limited information, this process just becomes more bland.

    Comment

    • OOD Town drunk
      Adept
      • Feb 2013
      • 171

      #3
      Originally posted by Mark
      Randarts keeps the game varied for long-term players. (I've never used it myself)

      The greatest cause of death for junior players is lack-of-knowledge-of-what-can-kill-you.

      A really interesting and crazy equalizer for hardcore players could be "randMonsters", or at least "RandUniques" (except a very few)! Has any variant explored this possibility?

      I wonder how many 'Kavlax' types the RNG would throw at you each time!?
      I can't recommend randarts enough. They make the game so much more exciting. Every unidentified artifact becomes Christmas Eve, and every identified artifact becomes a freshly opened present. Granted, you are occasionally going to get mismatched socks, but hey, at least you have your +10 boots of speed.

      Comment

      • mushroom patch
        Swordsman
        • Oct 2014
        • 298

        #4
        Yeah, I think the role of memorizing the monster database is somewhat overstated (although, I admit I say this as someone who has memorized most of the monster database). I say this in practically every post, but the real insight that marks the difference between beginner/intermediate players and advanced "this game is easy" types is that you don't have to fight every monster and indeed you don't even want to fight most monsters.

        As far as randomizing monsters, there are only a few things monsters do that you have to worry about. At low levels, it's paralysis attacks or spells and confusion branded melee. Later on, the main one is summoning, the next is high damage spells like mana storm, and then breath weapons. Mixing and matching the type of breath weapons would make some difference, but not that much. It's still the same dynamic: I don't want to get breathed on and I don't have to, so I'm either not going to wake this thing up or I'm going to teleport it away if it's awake. Mixing and matching paralysis, confusion melee, summoning, etc. -- I don't see how that could work.

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        • debo
          Veteran
          • Oct 2011
          • 2402

          #5
          Originally posted by Mark
          Randarts keeps the game varied for long-term players. (I've never used it myself)

          The greatest cause of death for junior players is lack-of-knowledge-of-what-can-kill-you.

          A really interesting and crazy equalizer for hardcore players could be "randMonsters", or at least "RandUniques" (except a very few)! Has any variant explored this possibility?

          I wonder how many 'Kavlax' types the RNG would throw at you each time!?
          HallucinationMushroom used to edit his Sil monster files so that all monsters had the glyph 'red D' and were called 'monster', so that he had to figure out what he was fighting based on what they did in their first few turns

          Not really random since the monster types were still the same, they were just totally obscured.
          Glaurung, Father of the Dragons says, 'You cannot avoid the ballyhack.'

          Comment

          • HallucinationMushroom
            Knight
            • Apr 2007
            • 785

            #6
            Originally posted by Mark
            Randarts keeps the game varied for long-term players. (I've never used it myself)

            The greatest cause of death for junior players is lack-of-knowledge-of-what-can-kill-you.

            A really interesting and crazy equalizer for hardcore players could be "randMonsters", or at least "RandUniques" (except a very few)! Has any variant explored this possibility?

            I wonder how many 'Kavlax' types the RNG would throw at you each time!?
            Yes, I would love this! I've mentioned this a few times on characters or the forum but I would love random monsters. Like Debo said I've tried masking existing monsters in V and Sil, but it's not quite the same since I can sort of figure out what I'm fighting. It's probably worth pointing out I only really play warriors so I can afford to soak the necessary damage to figure out what is going on.



            V: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=11292
            You are on something strange

            Comment

            • bio_hazard
              Knight
              • Dec 2008
              • 649

              #7
              Maybe just randomize some things about humanoids to give a little more variability and flavor- give a few in the adventurer parties resistances as if wearing magical armor, give a few orcs in the herd branded attacks, give some gnomes fire bolt instead of frost bolt, etc. But leave the red dragons with fire all the time.

              Comment

              • Jax
                Rookie
                • Jan 2014
                • 15

                #8
                as someone who relies on his monster knowledge in order to dive quickly and avoid nasty things as bread and butter to survive, this is the sort of thing i have nightmares about. no thank you
                Last edited by Jax; November 21, 2014, 20:44.

                Comment

                • Nivim
                  Apprentice
                  • Jan 2014
                  • 69

                  #9
                  Don't worry Jax; everyone is saying 'option' like randarts-- the worst you'll need to worry about is the option becoming a fad and other players asking you to try it.

                  Comment

                  • Magnate
                    Angband Devteam member
                    • May 2007
                    • 5110

                    #10
                    Originally posted by Mark
                    Randarts keeps the game varied for long-term players. (I've never used it myself)

                    The greatest cause of death for junior players is lack-of-knowledge-of-what-can-kill-you.

                    A really interesting and crazy equalizer for hardcore players could be "randMonsters", or at least "RandUniques" (except a very few)! Has any variant explored this possibility?

                    I wonder how many 'Kavlax' types the RNG would throw at you each time!?
                    This is one of several recurring ideas to which the devteam returns every year or two. It might well happen one day - when there's any space on the options screen.
                    "Been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home" - The Beatles

                    Comment

                    • AnonymousHero
                      Veteran
                      • Jun 2007
                      • 1393

                      #11
                      Originally posted by Mark
                      Randarts keeps the game varied for long-term players. (I've never used it myself)

                      The greatest cause of death for junior players is lack-of-knowledge-of-what-can-kill-you.

                      A really interesting and crazy equalizer for hardcore players could be "randMonsters", or at least "RandUniques" (except a very few)! Has any variant explored this possibility?

                      I wonder how many 'Kavlax' types the RNG would throw at you each time!?
                      This is one of these things that needs an absurd amount of balancing to avoid ridiculous instadeaths. A classic case is the game-that-shall-not-be-mentioned-in-roguelike-circles[1] with its Fire Enchanted bosses that would instantly kill basically any character from full health when it died (rather than by hitting the player or anything else). Not that that particular example is particularly likely in Angband, but I could imagine similarly stupid scenarios.

                      [1] Alright, it's Diablo II.

                      Comment

                      • Derakon
                        Prophet
                        • Dec 2009
                        • 9022

                        #12
                        Originally posted by AnonymousHero
                        This is one of these things that needs an absurd amount of balancing to avoid ridiculous instadeaths. A classic case is the game-that-shall-not-be-mentioned-in-roguelike-circles[1] with its Fire Enchanted bosses that would instantly kill basically any character from full health when it died (rather than by hitting the player or anything else). Not that that particular example is particularly likely in Angband, but I could imagine similarly stupid scenarios.
                        I'd be more worried about the ToME4 problem. The game gives you complete monster info for every monster you encounter, but most of them are roadbumps, which encourages you to not really pay too much attention to what the monster can do. However, every once in awhile a monster will get a combination of abilities that makes it into a massive threat...and if you don't realize this pronto then it can readily kill you.

                        If we can figure out how to have randomized monsters without requiring the player to read the monster info on every monster they encounter, then great. The two approaches I'd be inclined to take are:

                        a) bonus template systems, where you take a base monster and apply a template to it that modifies its stats in known ways. For example a "Nimble Fire Hound" would have +5 speed, an "Armored Paladin" would have +25% AC, etc.

                        b) a randart approach, where every monster race is rerolled each game, but inside of a given game, all monsters of that race are identical (to the extent that any two monsters of the same race are currently identical, of course). Randarts took an awful lot of fiddling to avoid making inappropriately over/underpowered items, though, and I expect a randmonsters approach to have similar issues.

                        Comment

                        • AnonymousHero
                          Veteran
                          • Jun 2007
                          • 1393

                          #13
                          Originally posted by Derakon
                          I'd be more worried about the ToME4 problem. The game gives you complete monster info for every monster you encounter, but most of them are roadbumps, which encourages you to not really pay too much attention to what the monster can do. However, every once in awhile a monster will get a combination of abilities that makes it into a massive threat...and if you don't realize this pronto then it can readily kill you.
                          You just summarized exactly what the D2 problem was. I say "was" because eventually everybody learned (either by experience or word-of-mouth) to never ever stand near a Fire Enchanted boss in D2/HC.

                          Comment

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