"Who are those guys?"

[Egavactip]

The thread title is a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid reference and refers to the relentless pursuers of the two outlaws in that movie. So what if there was a Unique that could pursue you *across levels*, following you. That could be scary/interesting?

[mushroom patch]

Or indeed, why not let all monsters pursue you across different levels?

I think the answer is that angband levels are mutually independent, non-interacting universes. Once you've left a level, that's the end of the level and everything on it. As soon as you say something can persist, you open a whole can of worms. Does the same monster just teleport to the new level? If so, what if he picks up an item before doing so? Presumably the item goes with him. Interesting.

If one monster can transcend the distinction between levels, why can't any other monsters do it? Why don't they follow you up and down stairs, like in crawl?

What happens if you recall to town? Does this unique follow you there? I would think not. So then he's waiting in the dungeon wherever you go? Either way, still further cans.

I think such monsters would cut against the theme and design of angband. Now maybe that would be interesting and exciting. If there's a monster you literally can't get away from, that's a really new and different thing. If it's even remotely tough, it could put a serious damper on the current meta of diving straight to the endgame. I for one would not favor such a development, since the fallback position would be the traditional slow and grinding style. Maybe there's a third way no one has considered that would come out of this, but I kind of doubt it.

Let me propose a slightly different but related idea. Suppose you had a type of hound, call it a ghost hound, and that would have a chance of generating everytime a hound pack does. If you leave the level without killing all the ghost hounds on it, then the ghost hounds follow you to the new (non-town) level -- maybe they try to spawn together or with other hounds, but the only way to get rid of them is by killing them, no banishment, recall doesn't change your ghost hound count. Over time, you have a building threat of more and more ghost hounds. Maybe that's interesting, I don't know. I think it would definitely be scary, particularly if they had empty_mind and could defeat some of the sillier ways to avoid breath attacks, e.g. zig-zag tunnels. Pass or kill wall would help there.

[Derakon]

I suggested in the past making certain unique monsters be "guardian" monsters, who would have a 100% chance of being generated on every dungeon level once you hit their native depth. You would be free to ignore them, but they'd keep showing up until you killed them. The idea, broadly, would be to make diving a bit riskier.

In practice, certain uniques are already very common once you hit their depth -- I'm thinking of Saruman in particular here.

[Estie]

The ghost hound is interesting, but what level are they ?
If a specific level, they will be dangerous or deadly up to a point, and afterwards small fry. If they adjust their level/power/numbers to char level, it becomes weird. I dont know, probably the "change level = sure escape from current mess" is just too good to mess with. Most games have a "kill this or lose the xp for good" approach and I love vanilla for not going that route.

Persistent followers are the way towards Sil/the majority of other games.

[mushroom patch]

re: Ghost hounds, I would say they should start spawning when hounds start spawning and have the same type as the hound pack they originally spawn with, so that over time you develop a diverse pack of hounds with various different breath weapons and strength that scales with the existing hound spawn rates. This would put somewhat of a check on the reduced spawn rates of hounds and the ease with which one can dive and scum as a result. It would become impossible to completely ignore hounds.

When you leave a new ghost hound on a level, you should get a warning message, e.g. "You hear a bone chilling howl in the distance..." Perhaps there should be some provisos that avoid spawning ghost hounds, for example maybe they don't spawn the first time a player arrives at a given depth or inside of vaults.

[edit:] also @Derakon, agreed re: Saruman.

[Bogatyr]

re: re: Ghost hounds

Or….not!

I never understood this continuous compulsion people have to change game mechanics to prevent tactics and playstyles that are invented, quite appropriately and sometimes cleverly, in response to those mechanics. Sure some things like hokey-stick corridors were just busted. But new levels being new universes is so deeply ingrained in the soul of the game that changing it approaches "blasphemy" :P. Monster ghosts smacks too much of nethack. There's a reason I play angband over decades and not nethack: angband is infinitely more fun.

Fast diving has its own built-in limitation within the current game mechanics: monsters get harder and get MUCH more likely to one-shot kill you if you exceed the dlev appropriate for your character & equipment. No new super annoying monsters need to be invented for people who somehow dislike how a player avoids hounds.

[Lionmaruu]

Some kind of differentiated "quest level" with a guardian could be nice.

I am not fond of any mechanic that prevents me from making a specific level my home If I want to, just roaming aimlessly there, forever, killing the one odd spawn or two.

So I don't like the idea of something that compulsively makes me flee the dungeon. didnt liked it on FTL, didnt liked it on Sil.


I would love a "perma level"+"no extra spawns" option tough, that would be nice to experiment.

[AnonymousHero]

re: re: Ghost hounds

I never understood this continuous compulsion people have to change game mechanics to prevent tactics and playstyles that are invented, quite appropriately and sometimes cleverly, in response to those mechanics. Sure some things like hokey-stick corridors were just busted. But new levels being new universes is so deeply ingrained in the soul of the game that changing it approaches "blasphemy" :P. Monster ghosts smacks too much of nethack. There's a reason I play angband over decades and not nethack: angband is infinitely more fun.

Along those lines... I think it would be really interesting if the developers were to roll actual real-life dice on some of these decisions . Of course such decisions should be revisited, but it'd be fun to have competition-driven development. We'd need some sort of really crazy once-in-a-while upset to avoid local maxima, but...

[mushroom patch]

re: re: Ghost hounds

Or….not!

I never understood this continuous compulsion people have to change game mechanics to prevent tactics and playstyles that are invented, quite appropriately and sometimes cleverly, in response to those mechanics. Sure some things like hokey-stick corridors were just busted. But new levels being new universes is so deeply ingrained in the soul of the game that changing it approaches "blasphemy" :P. Monster ghosts smacks too much of nethack. There's a reason I play angband over decades and not nethack: angband is infinitely more fun.

Fast diving has its own built-in limitation within the current game mechanics: monsters get harder and get MUCH more likely to one-shot kill you if you exceed the dlev appropriate for your character & equipment. No new super annoying monsters need to be invented for people who somehow dislike how a player avoids hounds.

I guess if you play disconnected stairs, this is a reasonable point, but in default options, there is literally no chance of anything going wrong when you go down stairs. There really is no increasing difficulty, except that the probability of an unacceptable situation is greater so more scumming is required.

In my opinion, based on the way I've played the game (which is no holds barred, default options where I dive to the bottom and scum) I don't think there's any challenge there -- admittedly, I've memorized monster lists and so on, which I guess is a challenge of sorts for a new player. Not that I expect anyone to implement ghost hounds. I'm certainly not going to code it. I'm just saying it's a reasonable counter balance to current meta. As we learn more about the game, we learn areas of weakness and its worth tweaking here and there.

[Bogatyr]

I guess if you play disconnected stairs, this is a reasonable point, but in default options, there is literally no chance of anything going wrong when you go down stairs. There really is no increasing difficulty, except that the probability of an unacceptable situation is greater so more scumming is required.

In my opinion, based on the way I've played the game (which is no holds barred, default options where I dive to the bottom and scum) I don't think there's any challenge there -- admittedly, I've memorized monster lists and so on, which I guess is a challenge of sorts for a new player. Not that I expect anyone to implement ghost hounds. I'm certainly not going to code it. I'm just saying it's a reasonable counter balance to current meta. As we learn more about the game, we learn areas of weakness and its worth tweaking here and there.

The beauty of Angband is that "there is more than one way to do it." You've chosen one way. Just because you got tired of it, doesn't mean that nobody else should be allowed to discover/experience it. Start playing with disconnected stairs or other options if you don't like scumming. Or, simply, don't scum!

Old (variable) stat gain/loss and requiring the "grape jelly trick" was broken game mechanics. Level creation I think is far beyond this and like I said represents the "soul of the game". It's a different game without it, plain and simple.

[mushroom patch]

I'm not one to go looking for trouble. I play default options, no holds barred. If I can do something exploitative, I'm going to do it.

As for the specific proposal, I think it just gums up scumming, but doesn't prevent it. With the tweaks I've outlined, it should have no effect on a force down/don't like to scum-type player.