Angband Philosophy II: Magic

[Sky]

Im not a lotr expert, but as i understand it, there is no magic.

Elven weapons are not magic, they are simply "well made". The elves explain this to Sam when he is gifted a rope which ties and unties itself.

Sure, its magic, but not as we understand it. The five wizards are the only wizards in middle earth. Even then it's a far cry from the high magic milieu of d&d.

Staves of teleport and scrolls of destruction do not fit with lotr lore ... but they dont have to.

The rings, are exceptional BECAUSE they are magic. Its as if someone could turn invisible IRL, you wouldn't just say "oh its a ring of invisibility" because you' d know there is no such thing.

I liked very much tome 1, but i prefer angband because its simpler and it has less randomness and no excessive minmaxing.

I think, in the end, that angband should be perfected, not expanded.

[Tarrasque]

What is meant by "instadeath"?

Most numbers in this post are meant to be approximate.

Some of this is obvious or already in the game.

I don't think eliminating instadeaths is neccessarily a good goal, because a player will play as riskily as they feel comfortable. If the difficulty curve is too shallow it makes having 100 floors kinda pointless.

A one turn death might be OK if a "moderately cautious" player has a "high chance" of being able to avoid it. Say a new character speed dives down 10 floors without leveling, finds 15 ?s of Deep Descent along the way, then reads them all one after the other. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an unavoidable death if a level 1 player spends any time on DL 60, since being in that situation is easily avoidable in the first place.

An extreme example of an unfair death would be if you had a 50% chance of dying automatically when you reach CLevel 30. Ignoring level feelings for now, if you clear out every floor and you aren't going below half health in any of your fights, I think an instadeath one floor lower would probably be unfair. The dungeon shouldn't get too difficult too quickly, and new status effects or elemental attacks should be introduced gradually with easy monsters. That being said, if your level feelings have all been 3s and 4s, and your next one is "Omens of death haunt this place" I think that level should be appropriately risky.

If level feelings are ever redone it might be nice if monsters in vaults only counted half as much towards the feeling of danger since they're probably only getting out if the player wants them out, while objects in vaults would affect the treasure feeling, say, 3/4th as much as usual because you would have to open the vault to get to them.

[Tibarius]

re: Derakon instadeaths

I think it is a good idea to move the game away from instadeaths, even tho i think it is a major design aspect of it.

New players are surely frustrated and it is not much better for veterans, they just knew usually they risk their character because they are too deep / without resistances / without required protections etc.

This will have major impact on many aspects tho. A mage without teleport other, phase door ... hard to stay alive at all.

[Nick]

Okay, that statement was overly strong. I don't have a 100% win rate either. But what I was trying to say is that if the game were unable to kill you in a single turn, then you should, assuming you're reasonably awake/alert/not intoxicated, realize "Oh hey, this encounter is going poorly, I should use one of my many escape options." Thus the game "needs" instadeaths to keep players on their toes.

I see your point, but I think it's a bit more subtle than that. The decision on exactly when to bail out of a fight is not always clear-cut, and the player can simply run out of foolproof escapes.

I think what I'm trying to say is that there's a grey area between instadeath and complete escape.

[Derakon]

And yet I still die. What are you trying to say?

I guess it's different for people who have been playing the game for a thousand years.

Okay, that statement was overly strong. I don't have a 100% win rate either. But what I was trying to say is that if the game were unable to kill you in a single turn, then you should, assuming you're reasonably awake/alert/not intoxicated, realize "Oh hey, this encounter is going poorly, I should use one of my many escape options." Thus the game "needs" instadeaths to keep players on their toes.

[debo]

And yet I still die. What are you trying to say?

I guess it's different for people who have been playing the game for a thousand years.

I thought you became maintainer so that you'd have an excuse for your embarrassing competition performance.

[Nick]

The problem with Vanilla as it stands of course is that the player's defensive options are so strong that giving them even one turn of survival is tantamount to saying that the player can never die with even minimally intelligent play.

And yet I still die. What are you trying to say?

I guess it's different for people who have been playing the game for a thousand years.

[debo]

Global limit -- you can use what you find. Same as with big healing potions in the current game, basically. If you want to save them all up for the late game, that's your call, but it may mean sticking it through in some dangerous situations early on. Similarly if you use your escapes at the first hint of trouble, then you may not have them when you really need them...

And of course if you want to grind for them, then again you're free to do so. Ideally the allocation rate should be such that this isn't generally necessary. We've managed it pretty well with the consumables people use in the final fights, so I don't think this is impossible to set up.

I think Halls of Mist has something marginally similar to this (limited escapes refreshed per floor), if anyone wants to try it.

[Derakon]

@Derakon: Global limit on escapes or cooldown like in T4 ? The latter removes "burst" escape, the former doesnt. Otoh, cd system is independant of game length.

Global limit -- you can use what you find. Same as with big healing potions in the current game, basically. If you want to save them all up for the late game, that's your call, but it may mean sticking it through in some dangerous situations early on. Similarly if you use your escapes at the first hint of trouble, then you may not have them when you really need them...

And of course if you want to grind for them, then again you're free to do so. Ideally the allocation rate should be such that this isn't generally necessary. We've managed it pretty well with the consumables people use in the final fights, so I don't think this is impossible to set up.

[Philip]

Infinite Dungeon is just that, infinite (though you can only do each depth once). That's the point. You win if you die further than anyone has died before you. Or you win once you get to a certain dungeon level you choose ahead of time. Or you win by finding all the special lore. The clock in Sil isn't too brutally restrictive, though yeah, I get what you're saying.

[Estie]

@Philip: Vanilla has all that, too, but you can pick difficulty during game by picking depth without penalty. This is what I am missing in Sil and T4, I dislike this aspect of both games, so I guess we can just agree to disagree (technically, T4 has an endless dungeon mode, however it is lacking a winning condition. Why ?)

@Derakon: Global limit on escapes or cooldown like in T4 ? The latter removes "burst" escape, the former doesnt. Otoh, cd system is independant of game length.

[Derakon]

Well, how do you want to accomplish that ?

Ahh, that's the tricky bit, isn't it? I'm just an ideas man, I'll leave the implementation details to the rest of you.

More seriously, one simple potential solution would be to make all escapes be strictly limited in number. No casting Phase Door/Teleport/Teleport Other/Destruction/etc; you must use consumables, and they're in limited supply (wands/staves wouldn't be rechargeable, and rods wouldn't exist). Likewise, Phase Door wouldn't be sold in shops, except the Black Market. Every item you use now is an item you won't be able to use later. So you have the resources to escape some fights, but poor play will run your resources out and then you'll die.

[Philip]

Tome4 and Sil both in fact do this incredibly well. In Tome4, once you start running out of options, you might be able to disengage safely, you might have to tough out a temporary effect, and how likely you are to survive a nasty situation depends on prior actions, but not entirely. Additionally, it teaches you to recognize that something is not going well before you get confused and silenced. In Sil, it takes a while to die, but if you don't pay attention, you can get into a situation where retreat is either blocked or impractical because of speed issues. How characters deal with these situations is what is interesting.

EDIT: They don't do it by limiting ability to pick difficulty, since the game is designed from scratch, there isn't a difficulty that's blocked off or anything. There are a couple difficulty options in Sil, and some races are easier. And Tome4 does actually have varying difficulty *and* permadeath options, ranging from easy and lots of lives to absurdly hard, one life only.

[Estie]

I think Vanilla should be moving away from instadeaths, and therefore do not support redesigns that make them more common. I recognize that instadeaths are a core part of modern Vanilla balance, but Vanilla should not have classes that are never free from the risk of instadeath. You should only be at such a risk if you're doing something seriously unwise like being at dlvl90/clvl30. During normal play, death should occur over the course of at least a few turns, during which time the player has a chance to recognize that things are going horribly wrong.

The problem with Vanilla as it stands of course is that the player's defensive options are so strong that giving them even one turn of survival is tantamount to saying that the player can never die with even minimally intelligent play. So we need to find ways to rectify that.

Well, how do you want to accomplish that ?

You can limit the options for disengagement once a fight started; for example, removing phase door scrolls might already be enough (next competition idea: vanilla warrior, phase door scrolls removed).

The thing is, then you commit to a fight, realize things are going horribly wrong while you lose hps during a few rounds, and you still die for lack of options. I think this isnt what you have in mind, is it ?

You can limit the players ability to pick their preferred difficulty, like Sil or ToME 4 do ("we only allow ironman mode now"). This is similar to the above case; while in theory you might have escapes, you are reluctant to use them as doing so would close doors.

You can limit the divination options (detect monsters). Have the player bumbling about in the dark, with the option to retreat if a dragon appears and takes away 1/2 his life in 1 breath. This sounds like the best option to me, sofar. But is it better than the current detect + risk 1-shot death ?

My point is that while I agree that ideally it should take more than 1 turn from "everything is fine" to "tombstone", it doesnt matter if you lose hit points continually during that time, or all at once on the last turn of events.

Running into a gmm because you didnt detect and getting KOed is better than starting a fight with a giant, realizing that you are going to lose, but lacking options to retreat.

[Derakon]

I think Vanilla should be moving away from instadeaths, and therefore do not support redesigns that make them more common. I recognize that instadeaths are a core part of modern Vanilla balance, but Vanilla should not have classes that are never free from the risk of instadeath. You should only be at such a risk if you're doing something seriously unwise like being at dlvl90/clvl30. During normal play, death should occur over the course of at least a few turns, during which time the player has a chance to recognize that things are going horribly wrong.

The problem with Vanilla as it stands of course is that the player's defensive options are so strong that giving them even one turn of survival is tantamount to saying that the player can never die with even minimally intelligent play. So we need to find ways to rectify that.