Balance and pacing (long)

[Nick]

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.

Thanks for this excellent analysis.

As context, I should say that I have spent very little time thinking about game balance. My focus has been on getting structural game changes in place (breaths, traps, curses, ID) and on code improvement. I have always expected significant rebalancing to happen before 4.1, and this thread will be of major assistance in that; there are still a few things that need addressing first, though (stuff may happen to stealth and monster AI, for example).

Now, to suggestions. The monster ones are great. The item suggestions (which seem to have been the most contested) all sound fairly reasonable to me too, and the vaults and pits comments are useful and a bit unexpected to me.

So some things I am thinking about for when balancing time comes. I was already thinking about caster level independent of depth, so I'm pleased you suggested it and am inclined to go with that one. I also have a bunch of other ideas broadly around the make-monsters-more-dangerous theme, including:

• Introducing worse side-effects for unresisted elemental attacks
• Making (new or existing) more dangerous deep monsters
• Introducing a (or expanding the existing) selection of monsters in the early- to mid-game which target particular player deficiencies - lack of pConf and pBlind, for example
• AI improvements mentioned earlier

These are fairly unformed thoughts, though. We'll see as we go along, and more ideas are good

[fizzix]

i agree that some items need to be rebalanced; some egos and artis appear when they are already useless, and are immediately squelched. however, i do not think a massive rebuild is in order. the reason why angband seems too easy with certain modifications, is because you have deep, complex experience in the game, not because it's "too easy".

Some egos and artifacts will always have to appear when they are useless. Not every item you find can be useful. Provided you can instantly squelch the items, and all others of their type, then I don't see the big problem here.

While it is true I am experienced in the game. The game is objectively easier than it was in 3.0.x for many reasons. Just the fact that breaths now reduce with distance means the game is easier. We've also removed many sources of tedium (having to ID every item, having to wade through seas of orcs and hounds to get anywhere, having to spam trap detection because hitting a summon trap often will instantly kill you, etc.) While getting rid of these makes a better game it's also an easier game.

[Sky]

i agree that some items need to be rebalanced; some egos and artis appear when they are already useless, and are immediately squelched. however, i do not think a massive rebuild is in order. the reason why angband seems too easy with certain modifications, is because you have deep, complex experience in the game, not because it's "too easy".

[Grotug]

Would it be reasonable to have @ ID stat rings immediately upon walk over once he knows what they are from previous experience of trying them on, once he reaches a certain CL level, 30 or 40? Might this also apply to {ego} items he's already identified, like caps of telepathy and Katanas of extra attacks for example? He still doesn't know the stats on the {ego} item, but he knows that it has telepathy because he's ID'd caps of telepathy before, or he knows it has extra attacks because he's id'd katanas with extra attacks before.

[Derakon]

The only reason I dislike these metrics is a lot of your pace depends on how lucky you get. (In addition to class choice, a mage is going to go a lot slower than a warrior.)

Anyway, the problem is entirely in the domain of the balancers. Your turncount suggestions presume an "average" turncount which I guess is what you plan to balance around? I've always prefered a balance based on levels, the idea being you get enough gear to win in 100 levels (right now it's probably closer to 50, especially if you focus on clearing vaults and high reward monsters). I like this metric because it's easy to balance through stats, and it doesn't depend on class. My current thinking is we need to either greatly reduce the frequency of good items, or reduce the number of levels significantly.

We might need different metrics for different classes, yeah. Or at least some kind of modifier to the base numbers.

And I didn't intend necessarily to use game pace as a metric for balancing, so much as for guiding user expectations. If the game tells an inexperienced player "hey, you're playing super slowly", then they'll have a better idea of why they feel bored.

I definitely favor the use of statistics for guiding game balance decisions, so long as we have a reasonable expectation that the stats are relevant to how easy the game is. And it seems intuitively reasonable that the measured frequency of various items at different depths would be useful information when balancing the game.

[fizzix]

Yeah, this is intended to be a weaker form of Sil's hard clock. At the moment I think we all still agree that players should be allowed to play at their own pace; we just want them to know that their pace can be improved.

Someone with more experience with the ladder (and more recent play experience in general) could probably give better numbers for what different paces are, but at a guess I'd say 125k for average, 100k for powerdiver, 65k for lightspeed.

The only reason I dislike these metrics is a lot of your pace depends on how lucky you get. (In addition to class choice, a mage is going to go a lot slower than a warrior.)

Anyway, the problem is entirely in the domain of the balancers. Your turncount suggestions presume an "average" turncount which I guess is what you plan to balance around? I've always prefered a balance based on levels, the idea being you get enough gear to win in 100 levels (right now it's probably closer to 50, especially if you focus on clearing vaults and high reward monsters). I like this metric because it's easy to balance through stats, and it doesn't depend on class. My current thinking is we need to either greatly reduce the frequency of good items, or reduce the number of levels significantly.

[Derakon]

@Derakon--or you can make a gameclock like Sil's that enforces advancing. But your idea is good.
So what qualifies as powerdiving? 100-turn win? and 50K for epic?

Yeah, this is intended to be a weaker form of Sil's hard clock. At the moment I think we all still agree that players should be allowed to play at their own pace; we just want them to know that their pace can be improved.

Someone with more experience with the ladder (and more recent play experience in general) could probably give better numbers for what different paces are, but at a guess I'd say 125k for average, 100k for powerdiver, 65k for lightspeed.

[Pete Mack]

@Derakon--or you can make a gameclock like Sil's that enforces advancing. But your idea is good.
So what qualifies as powerdiving? 100-turn win? and 50K for epic?

[fizzix]

The early game mage problem can be ameliorated by allowing SP to regenerate faster at low values.

[Derakon]

I think the game can already become tedious in early stages, especially with mages. If you start to move good gear further down, it would become even more dragging. (I'm not really fond of mages anyway, but tried out some lately.)
Part of the fun (at least in my view) is to get a really lucky finding every now and then.

Really lucky finds should be possible, but they should also be really lucky, i.e. not happen in every game.

Part of the problem we run into with pacing is the fact that there's nothing forcing the player to go into deeper levels before they're comfortable doing so. They can just scum at $safe_depth until they make a dumb mistake and die, and they'll end up blaming the game for being boring. And they're not wrong, is the thing. But no matter what we do, the game's pacing is going to be off for some percentage of players, so long as we hold fast to the idea that players are allowed to play an infinite number of equivalent levels if they so desire.

Maybe one simple thing we could do is just have a play clock that tells the player what kind of "pace" they're setting, based on game turns and max depth. It'd show up on the character screen, but it wouldn't have any game impact; it'd just tell them "your playstyle is average/leisurely/fast/sluglike/powerdiver/etc." So players that are playing slowly will at least know that they're playing slowly. Beating the game at various paces could be a conduct that the game would measure for you.

[Mondkalb]

I think the game can already become tedious in early stages, especially with mages. If you start to move good gear further down, it would become even more dragging. (I'm not really fond of mages anyway, but tried out some lately.)
Part of the fun (at least in my view) is to get a really lucky finding every now and then.

[Estie]

Not sure what you mean by that. For the last fight (and maybe Sauron too) there are indeed some ego weapons that would be better (because they are more specialized) than artifacts, but that's a rather extreme example. I could give the reverse example with artifacts weapons with fire immunity being much better for Gothmog.

For other slots except the ones I mentioned (BoS and clocks of Aman) I feel artifacts are still much better than ego, even at the very end.

I was mostly thinking of randarts, standarts are built into the niche much more effectively. But it applies there, too.
Look at Sting, for example: it used to be +2 str/dex/con. If you are using it, it competes with egos - a Lochaber axe of Westernesse is not gonna top it, but a MoD +2 attacks is most certainly going to. Somewhere inbetween is the border, and by reducing the Pvals of Sting, you lower that threshold leading to more egos in the lategame setup.

If you are using artifact weapons mostly for the immunity they provide, your kind of proving my point.

[Pete Mack]

We really need a 3.0 "v2" competition. (That is, modified with runes and current squelching. The new ID system is much better, except we'd need to get rid of the really horrible items like =Woe, !Detonations, !Death, because ID-by-use is impossible--or at least ridiculously tedious*--with those present in the game.

* You can ID-by-use !Death and !Detonations by throwing every single unseen potion against a monster the first time you pick one up. =Woe, of course, would be useless: by the time you see the first one, you would already know enough mods to recognize immediately what it is.

[Will]

However, having egos topping artifacts all the time in the endgame is still in effect.

Not sure what you mean by that. For the last fight (and maybe Sauron too) there are indeed some ego weapons that would be better (because they are more specialized) than artifacts, but that's a rather extreme example. I could give the reverse example with artifacts weapons with fire immunity being much better for Gothmog.

For other slots except the ones I mentioned (BoS and clocks of Aman) I feel artifacts are still much better than ego, even at the very end.

[Derakon]

One of the first things that the v4 project did was scrap the current set of egos and replace them with a more Diablo-like system where egos had various attributes cobbled onto them that mutated the item in various ways. Pluses were part of this, so e.g. the Sharpness affix would increase +to-dam on an edged weapon. One of the big lessons of this effort is that the greatest ability that early weapon ego items have? Is the pluses on them. A Dagger of Flame (+0, +0) is a lot less good than a Sharp Balanced Dagger (+4, +6).

In current Vanilla, all egos have substantial pluses on them, and most {good} weapons have upwards of +5 on them even when found at dlvl1. There's no particular reason this needs to be the case. We can clamp down on the player's power level simply by redoing the formula that decides how many pluses to put on an item, and remove the additional plus bonus that ego items get. I don't think an enchanted item found at dlvl1 should have more than +2 on it at the most, for example.

I will also agree that ego items are probably too common right now. Decreasing ego frequency will also decrease artifact frequency.