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I was going to finish my current game first, but I think I've seen enough so far (character is at endgame) that I can make some suggestions to game balance and game pacing that hopefully will improve things.
BACKGROUND
Typically, I break the game up into 4 sections. The first section is the early game where you can pretty much defeat all the monsters the game has to offer, except for some early large groups and early uniques. This lasts until about dlevel 10-15.
The second stage is one where you can still handle most things the game throws at you, except for most uniques, but monsters start appearing that you probably shouldn't deal with, because the xp isn't worth it. This lasts from about 10-15 to 25-30. It's when your character starts gathering the basic necessary gear, escapes, a decent weapon, some armor, healing potions, etc.
The third part (in my mind the most fun) is when the player starts lagging behind the monster development. Now it's not only uniques you can't kill, but a lot of native monsters that are very tough. Historically, this is the region where you are most likely to be instakilled by a high damage breather, like a drolem or a darcolich. This typically lasts from about 30 to n, where n is arbitrary. For the way I would play (without force_descent active) I would pretty much go directly down to 99 from here. With force_descent you can't scum the bottom levels, so this cuts off early (for me it ended at about 60)
The fourth part is when your character starts being able to handle most things in the dungeon again. Stats are near max and you have a good selection of artifact gear. This is the endgame and it usually involves gathering enough gear to go kill Sauron and Morgoth, and covering up any key resistance holes that you are missing.
MID-GAME WOES
With cone shaped breaths, a lot of the danger in the third part has been removed. Monster breath damage from off-screen just isn't a killer anymore. I think this change is for the better, but it needs to be compensated, and I'm going to offer some suggestions. This is the first mid-game woe.
The second is that gear goes from crap to great way too fast. Perhaps this was needed in the past, but again, now with breath damage reduced greatly, stuff like rbase can be pushed later in the dungeon. There's some nice balance things we can start doing with monster elemental attacks and the expected players kit. Gear that is too powerful is the second woe. There are a lot of tweaks I'd like to do here.
The third woe is that too many monsters are exactly the same. The problem is exacerbated in that the most common similar monsters are ones that appear in groups. This is a long standing problem, and I don't have good solutions for this yet.
Let's get to some suggestions.
SUGGESTIONS TO MONSTERS
In the past the most dangerous monsters were big breathers. Since breath damage was based off of HP, this meant a dangerous breather was also a monster that you couldn't kill. I think it's fine to have these monsters around, but it did feel a bit annoying. Specifically it felt like angband was missing a very common and important archetype, the glass cannon. The closest we have to glass cannons are Wights. This is where we can add things in.
My idea here is to include monsters that do a high amount of specific elemental damage (regularly 150-200) with spells. This might require redefining monster spell damage (I'm actually having a lot of trouble finding this info in the code...) Basically I want monsters to show up in the mid 30s that are a serious danger to a player without an elemental resist. Furthermore these monsters would have low hp, 100-200 or so, you'd be able to pick them off fairly easily, but if they get a shot at you, you could die.
The obvious class for these monsters are human casters (pyromancers, cryomancers, hydromancers and electromancers). But maybe there's something cleverer we can do.
The second thing I'd like to do is increase the damage for monster ball spells (and elemental bolt spells). These tend to be wimpy if you have the resist. I want them to be reasonably deadly without a resist. IIRC monster spell strength is based entirely on monster level. We might want to include more flexibility here so we can have earlier monsters that can cast powerful spells. Two options, the first is to include more powerful versions of spells. The second is to specify a caster level for each monster.
SUGGESTIONS TO ITEMS
This is probably the easiest thing to fix. Going through ego_item.txt offers many options for improvements. In the past I remember balancing these with stats, but with the changes to the deadliness of monsters, these can be rebalanced fairly aggressively.
Resist single element armor and shields currently stops at 30. I'd recommend bumping that up to 50.
Resist all, starts at 10, I'd recommend bumping that up to 30. Elvenkind similarly.
Permanence shouldn't be found until 50 at earliest.
headgear of intelligence and wisdom should be found until level 60
headgear of magi, might, lordliness, night and day, shouldn't start until 50.
telepathy shouldn't start until 70
Of seeing shouldn't start until 30
Boots of speed should have a much lower speed rating at low levels. We might need a new custom function rather than the mvalue. At very least they need to be moved deeper, at least to 60. Finding early boots of speed at +5 or higher is too powerful, and too easy to do.
I'd like a more heavier allocation penalty to the strong ego weapons at early levels. Either that or a reduction of the ego creation chance.
Lanterns of True Sight are way too powerful, freeing up important helm and ring slots. They're the only ego lantern creatable after level 30. Simple solution, increase brightness allocation all the way to 100, coupled with a drop in allocation prob for true seeing to 5 (so it's 10 times less likely than brightness).
Ego bows are actually pretty decent with their allocation sorting, as are DSMs
Artifact creation rate should be lowered and the OP early artifacts should be nerfed. This includes most daggers and rapiers, all the thancs should drop back to 1d4, bonuses should be reduced on many of the others as well.
In fact, I'd like to propose a temporary fix to the early game weapon problem. I'd like to introduce hard caps to enchantment possibilities for different weapon types. So daggers would max out at +5,+3 or something. The *thancs were boosted becauase at 1d4 they were worse than most standard branded daggers, but that's because standard branded daggers are too strong. This fix would go until a new and improved combat system comes into play.
There are probably some changes needed to consumables as well. Restore mana potions should probably have their allocation rate dropped for example. But this needs more input.
DUNGEON GENERATION
Finally, there are too many vaults in the late game. These provide so much useful gear for the player in the form of powerful artifacts. We probably should reduce greater vaults to about 2 or 3 total for a 100 level game.
Allocation of monster pits seems off. Troll have an average of 45, surely that should be around 30. Orcs average at 25, seems like it should be around 18. Yeah that means you probably can't handle an early troll or orc pit, but that's fine. Most of the other pit average levels seems like they can drop by about 5 levels or more. I mean, demons are 105, that's just dumb. Demon pits should be a common choice at dlevel 90, they shouldn't be drowned out by the Dragon and Ainu pits.
BACKGROUND
Typically, I break the game up into 4 sections. The first section is the early game where you can pretty much defeat all the monsters the game has to offer, except for some early large groups and early uniques. This lasts until about dlevel 10-15.
The second stage is one where you can still handle most things the game throws at you, except for most uniques, but monsters start appearing that you probably shouldn't deal with, because the xp isn't worth it. This lasts from about 10-15 to 25-30. It's when your character starts gathering the basic necessary gear, escapes, a decent weapon, some armor, healing potions, etc.
The third part (in my mind the most fun) is when the player starts lagging behind the monster development. Now it's not only uniques you can't kill, but a lot of native monsters that are very tough. Historically, this is the region where you are most likely to be instakilled by a high damage breather, like a drolem or a darcolich. This typically lasts from about 30 to n, where n is arbitrary. For the way I would play (without force_descent active) I would pretty much go directly down to 99 from here. With force_descent you can't scum the bottom levels, so this cuts off early (for me it ended at about 60)
The fourth part is when your character starts being able to handle most things in the dungeon again. Stats are near max and you have a good selection of artifact gear. This is the endgame and it usually involves gathering enough gear to go kill Sauron and Morgoth, and covering up any key resistance holes that you are missing.
MID-GAME WOES
With cone shaped breaths, a lot of the danger in the third part has been removed. Monster breath damage from off-screen just isn't a killer anymore. I think this change is for the better, but it needs to be compensated, and I'm going to offer some suggestions. This is the first mid-game woe.
The second is that gear goes from crap to great way too fast. Perhaps this was needed in the past, but again, now with breath damage reduced greatly, stuff like rbase can be pushed later in the dungeon. There's some nice balance things we can start doing with monster elemental attacks and the expected players kit. Gear that is too powerful is the second woe. There are a lot of tweaks I'd like to do here.
The third woe is that too many monsters are exactly the same. The problem is exacerbated in that the most common similar monsters are ones that appear in groups. This is a long standing problem, and I don't have good solutions for this yet.
Let's get to some suggestions.
SUGGESTIONS TO MONSTERS
In the past the most dangerous monsters were big breathers. Since breath damage was based off of HP, this meant a dangerous breather was also a monster that you couldn't kill. I think it's fine to have these monsters around, but it did feel a bit annoying. Specifically it felt like angband was missing a very common and important archetype, the glass cannon. The closest we have to glass cannons are Wights. This is where we can add things in.
My idea here is to include monsters that do a high amount of specific elemental damage (regularly 150-200) with spells. This might require redefining monster spell damage (I'm actually having a lot of trouble finding this info in the code...) Basically I want monsters to show up in the mid 30s that are a serious danger to a player without an elemental resist. Furthermore these monsters would have low hp, 100-200 or so, you'd be able to pick them off fairly easily, but if they get a shot at you, you could die.
The obvious class for these monsters are human casters (pyromancers, cryomancers, hydromancers and electromancers). But maybe there's something cleverer we can do.
The second thing I'd like to do is increase the damage for monster ball spells (and elemental bolt spells). These tend to be wimpy if you have the resist. I want them to be reasonably deadly without a resist. IIRC monster spell strength is based entirely on monster level. We might want to include more flexibility here so we can have earlier monsters that can cast powerful spells. Two options, the first is to include more powerful versions of spells. The second is to specify a caster level for each monster.
SUGGESTIONS TO ITEMS
This is probably the easiest thing to fix. Going through ego_item.txt offers many options for improvements. In the past I remember balancing these with stats, but with the changes to the deadliness of monsters, these can be rebalanced fairly aggressively.
Resist single element armor and shields currently stops at 30. I'd recommend bumping that up to 50.
Resist all, starts at 10, I'd recommend bumping that up to 30. Elvenkind similarly.
Permanence shouldn't be found until 50 at earliest.
headgear of intelligence and wisdom should be found until level 60
headgear of magi, might, lordliness, night and day, shouldn't start until 50.
telepathy shouldn't start until 70
Of seeing shouldn't start until 30
Boots of speed should have a much lower speed rating at low levels. We might need a new custom function rather than the mvalue. At very least they need to be moved deeper, at least to 60. Finding early boots of speed at +5 or higher is too powerful, and too easy to do.
I'd like a more heavier allocation penalty to the strong ego weapons at early levels. Either that or a reduction of the ego creation chance.
Lanterns of True Sight are way too powerful, freeing up important helm and ring slots. They're the only ego lantern creatable after level 30. Simple solution, increase brightness allocation all the way to 100, coupled with a drop in allocation prob for true seeing to 5 (so it's 10 times less likely than brightness).
Ego bows are actually pretty decent with their allocation sorting, as are DSMs
Artifact creation rate should be lowered and the OP early artifacts should be nerfed. This includes most daggers and rapiers, all the thancs should drop back to 1d4, bonuses should be reduced on many of the others as well.
In fact, I'd like to propose a temporary fix to the early game weapon problem. I'd like to introduce hard caps to enchantment possibilities for different weapon types. So daggers would max out at +5,+3 or something. The *thancs were boosted becauase at 1d4 they were worse than most standard branded daggers, but that's because standard branded daggers are too strong. This fix would go until a new and improved combat system comes into play.
There are probably some changes needed to consumables as well. Restore mana potions should probably have their allocation rate dropped for example. But this needs more input.
DUNGEON GENERATION
Finally, there are too many vaults in the late game. These provide so much useful gear for the player in the form of powerful artifacts. We probably should reduce greater vaults to about 2 or 3 total for a 100 level game.
Allocation of monster pits seems off. Troll have an average of 45, surely that should be around 30. Orcs average at 25, seems like it should be around 18. Yeah that means you probably can't handle an early troll or orc pit, but that's fine. Most of the other pit average levels seems like they can drop by about 5 levels or more. I mean, demons are 105, that's just dumb. Demon pits should be a common choice at dlevel 90, they shouldn't be drowned out by the Dragon and Ainu pits.
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