Using Level Feelings

[Monkey Face]

I know a lot of people are against level feelings but I think they can come in handy. For example, I went down to 900' feet a few minutes ago and saw a tame sheltered place. Rather than taking the first down stairway, I waited for the object feeling to come up. When I saw that there were superb treasures, you better believe I stayed on the level longer than I would otherwise have and was rewarded with =Speed <+8>. I still need quite a lot (see invisible, rBlindness, rConfusion, etc) but this should make it a lot more likely that I'll live to get those.

I'm curious to hear the arguments of those opposed to playing with level feelings as to why they don't (unless it is just to add to the challenge).

[Derakon]

I don't find them to be interesting, and I do find them to be very unthematic. Think about it: if you were playing without level feelings, you would have explored that level like any other level, presumably enjoying yourself just fine, and found the ring or not depending on if you felt like staying around. With the level feelings, you initially felt like you should leave because it was a "boring" level, then felt compelled to stick around and clear it to find some promised treasure.

Put another way, level feelings create expectations in your head of what a level should be like, but I prefer to play without those expectations.

As for unthematic, exactly why does the player have some mysterious extra sense that tells them vaguely how good the treasure is and how dangerous the monsters are? There've been many suggestions for ways to fix this (largely relating to adding environmental cues for various kinds of monsters) but nobody's actually implemented any of them yet so my dim opinion of the current system stands.

[bio_hazard]

I like level feelings. I think a big argument against them is that there may not be much correlation between what the game thinks is unusual and what is actually useful to you. Your ring of speed is almost universally useful, but it's at least as likely you could get a useless dungeon book, rod that you already have the spell for, etc. The chance of getting good stuff better lower down, so from an optimization standpoint it's usually not worth clearing a level.

Derakon- it's funny you call it "unthematic". While that's probably true, they've been part of Angband for so long (at least the 22 years I've been playing) to me I'd have a hard time imagining the game without them! I can still feel the rush of "You have an excellent feeling that your luck is turning"

[Bimbul]

'Superb' treasures as far as I can tell means you'll find Raal's Tome of Destrucion and Tenser's Transformations in one level....

... as a Half Orc Warrior.

Or a dwarven ribbed mail armour... as a a gnomish mage.

/cynic.



I pay little attention to it personally as I've found plenty of really decent 'scraps of junk' in my short time playing this.

[Bogatyr]

I like level feelings. Levels are large enough so that when I'm diving, I like knowing whether or not there's an OOD object on the level. If not, I take the first stairs down, if yes, then I explore the level thoroughly.

[PowerWyrm]

In my last game, 600ft was "scraps of junk", and a snaga I killed dropped a ring of speed +10. Imagine if I took the first stairs down...

[Bimbul]

In my last game, 600ft was "scraps of junk", and a snaga I killed dropped a ring of speed +10. Imagine if I took the first stairs down...

Exactamundo

I find that quite often what the game thinks* is good is a potion of consitution or something - which I know I'll find anyway when deep enough. A speed ring +10 - just wow - nice find!


*Not that a computer program thinks as such of course

[Tarrasque]

How accurate did level feeling seem in earlier versions? There's "special" levels with no-preserve mode but what about on the rest of the levels? Were they a reasonably reliable way to tell the power-level of the monsters + items?

Should the feelings be based more on character level or dungeon level?

[Derakon]

How accurate did level feeling seem in earlier versions? There's "special" levels with no-preserve mode but what about on the rest of the levels? Were they a reasonably reliable way to tell the power-level of the monsters + items?

They are not and have never been accurate in the way that humans want them to be. In previous versions at least the level feeling was a single level feeling that conflated monster danger and item quality so that you could e.g. get a "superb" level feeling just because the Tarrasque had decided to visit dlvl40 or something. Thus the level feeling was correctly completely useless and contributed nothing but a bit of atmosphere, as it should be.

</grump>

Should the feelings be based more on character level or dungeon level?

Base it on the phase of the moon and the current stock price index.

[AnonymousHero]

Base it on the phase of the moon and the current stock price index.

(I feel like that sentence should be continued

... and people will still see patterns in it that aren't there .

I'm with you: The level feelings should just be removed. Once that's happened we can discuss whether levels are generally too boring or too exciting and adjust level generation accordingly.

[Philip]

Yeah, giving separate feelings was a mistake. I actually agree that the player should be able to get level feelings, but only on condition that they are useless, like they used to be. I find it perfectly plausible that the player character learns to identify signs that something unusual is around. Sort of like pseudo-id for levels. Shouldn't be faultless though.

[Bogatyr]

Yeah, giving separate feelings was a mistake. I actually agree that the player should be able to get level feelings, but only on condition that they are useless, like they used to be. I find it perfectly plausible that the player character learns to identify signs that something unusual is around. Sort of like pseudo-id for levels. Shouldn't be faultless though.

No, separate level feelings do their job very well. They give a feeling for the difficulty of monsters, the potential presence of a pit, and if there are OOD items. Works great, I like it quite a bit.

[Bogatyr]

In my last game, 600ft was "scraps of junk", and a snaga I killed dropped a ring of speed +10. Imagine if I took the first stairs down...

Yeah, or if you'd taken one step differently, or if you'd cast a detect spell, fired a missile, dug out a wall, picked up some cash, or, or or, .... you *do* realize how the RNG works?

[yyt16384]

Yeah, or if you'd taken one step differently, or if you'd cast a detect spell, fired a missile, dug out a wall, picked up some cash, or, or or, .... you *do* realize how the RNG works?

Monster drops are generated when the monster is generated, and it's likely that this one was generated when entering the level, so what the player did before killing it doesn't matter a lot.

[Thraalbee]

I like level feelings but agree they are a bit off sometimes. That random drops are outside of the rating is fine, that is also true for summons.

It has probably been suggested before, but one way to improve the treasure rating would be to ignore squelched items.