Balance and pacing (long)

[Nick]

Rather than reduce the number of levels in the game, what if there was a birth option to set > down stairs take you 3 levels deeper and < up stairs one or two levels higher?

Go to lib/gamedata/constants.txt and change the stair-skip value, and stairs will take you that number of levels. That was introduced by fizzix in 4.0.3.

This is a special case which illustrates my philosophy on balance (short, slightly OT rant to follow). The game is never going to be balanced for everyone. My aim is

• have the default options at a point where some will say the game's too hard and some will say it's too easy;
• have sufficient race/class variability that that amounts to more difficulty options;
• have a set of birth options for further choice of difficulty level;
• make many other aspects easily modifiable for those that want to.

Angband is a single player game for adults. I'm not going to tell you how you should play.

And Eddie - I don't think you've lost your mind, you seem exactly as I remember you

[Will]

I read this thread with a healthy dose of irony as my clvl 27 dlvl 29 mage has only found one Defender and one armor of Resistance as "major drops" so far. And that includes killing Smeagol, Bullroarer, maybe Wormtongue (can't remember) and all of the orc uniques. A scroll of Acquirement that he was really excited to read yielded a weapon of Slay Animal. And because the RNG truly hates that guy, he's found only one book: Ethereal Openings.

Thank god for the black market and its ring of intelligence (+5) and (+2) and the armor shop with a helm of Intelligence (+2). Otherwise I might already have died of boredom.

[fizzix]

You can always try to avoid the Zs. In addition, staves of destruction litter the dungeon.

These are definitely not common now. You're unlikely to get one by dlevel 60 with average gameplay.

And for the rest of your post, orcs are/were a problem, as were giant groups of trolls and any other monster that spawned in groups of 25-30 and forced you to wade through them.

One of the changes I implemented was to reduce group sizes overall, and instead create smaller and varied groups, and bump up the number of total monsters to compensate. So you don't see 25 gallants on dlevel 8, but you might see 3 gallants, 2 acolytes and an apprentice. Most giants come in packs of 2 or 3 and have with them hounds of the appropriate type. You probably hate this change.

I have no problems with item destruction. It's certainly necessary right now.

[Pete Mack]

That's why I like to play rogues.

Mage is surprisingly good at sneaking around too. Even without ESP. But I agree: rogue is the best for it. Nothing beats full detection and ridiculous stealth for sneaking around. But 0-fail Tele Other is pretty good too.

[debo]

EDIT: Rather than reduce the number of levels in the game, what if there was a birth option to set > down stairs take you 3 levels deeper and < up stairs one or two levels higher?

Halls of Mist does something similar, and I like it.

Re: artefacts drop rates -- go play oangband and tell me how long you were able to stay awake. As long as things aren't quite as dull as that, I think we're in business.

[Grotug]

Literally the only fun thing in Angband is finding cool stuff. [snip]

Which is why it's really important to not have too many artifacts and {egos} drop. Someone else said you shouldn't be able to have all slots filled with a good artifact until the endgame. All my games in 4.0.5 have found good artifacts for each slot before DL70.

EDIT: Rather than reduce the number of levels in the game, what if there was a birth option to set > down stairs take you 3 levels deeper and < up stairs one or two levels higher?

[Estie]

What makes Zs boring is assymetric LOS.

What makes Zs boring is that they have the best possible attack type en masse focusing on @ from lvl 20 onward. Elemental, max range, pack, ball (ball aoe is irrelevant for 1 target but still adds insult to injury).

The weakest attack is the melee, which has to get in range and overcome AC, ranged projectile is next etc. If you flood the dungeon with Zs from early on, you basically state that you cant challenge the player with the lesser attack types, and I dont think that is true. There are no dangerous archers in the game, people are worried to give monsters melee attacks that can 1-hit, in a game where offscreen ranged attack have been 1-hitting forever. I say this not because I necessarily want 1-hitting melee attacks soon, but because it shows how far off the perception is.

I would like to see the basic tactical combat explored more; a pack of monsters all using irresistable ball attacks should be reserved for special occasions, not become bread and butter encounters. This is probably a lot of work, compared to just increasing 2 numbers in the monster generation (more and earlier hounds).

[PowerDiver]

It'd be something at least if the annoying monsters were at least different. But killing scores of hounds gets very old very quick. There are a very limited number of players that would find that enjoyable.

You can always try to avoid the Zs. In addition, staves of destruction litter the dungeon.

In my current 3.0 based game, I have killed significantly more orcs than Zs. I haven't seen people clamoring for fewer orcs the way they clamored for fewer Zs. I think you're all munchkins. An easy kill that produces loot is considered a plus, and a monster that hurts the pack is considered a minus.

What makes Zs boring is assymetric LOS. If dangerous, they might or might not be too annoying to be a game mechanic, but at least they aren't boring.

Anyway, I doubt you have to worry about anyone on the dev team wanting to change hound generation back. They are too polite to say it, but I assume they think I've lost my mind. I'm making a specific point about a specific situation in the hopes that they'll consider the underlying ideas in some other context later.

[Derakon]

While I support the symmetrical LOS changes, if the only way we can make the game "interesting" is to flood the floors with annoying monsters, then we have a serious problem.

It'd be something at least if the annoying monsters were at least different. But killing scores of hounds gets very old very quick. There are a very limited number of players that would find that enjoyable.

This at least is conceptually easy to fix -- add several more types of monsters that fill a similar niche as the hounds but are different somehow (in flavor, in exact abilities, etc.). I guess that niche is something like "always awake monster, preferably with a ranged attack, that chases you from anywhere on the level".

Some kind of clockwork golem sentinel as a precursor to the Drolem, for example. A group ghost enemy as a precursor to Dreads (sort of like ZAngband's Phantom Warriors). A high-level jelly that can spit acid. Elite uruks could probably use an upgrade (they just aren't that scary right now), so why not make them always awake? They're the elites, after all.

[fizzix]

I thought I had nerfed hounds, but I guess I made them tougher.

With symmetric LOS I get pack damage from all of

ZZZ
#Z#
#@#

assuming the middle top Z breathes on the intermediate Z causing splash damage.

What I thought was my nerf is that breaths are treated as bolts that explode into a ball, a la meteor swarm. In retrospect I guess that symmetric LOS dwarfs the so-called "nerf" change of a breath from a ball to a bolt.

I've been play testing. In another thread, where I bemoaned the change to reduce hound pack sizes leading to universal derision, I now understand that to make packs interesting you need symmetric LOS including knight moves. I now firmly stand by my opinion that reducing pack size was a mistake. But only if you do the other stuff right.

While I support the symmetrical LOS changes, if the only way we can make the game "interesting" is to flood the floors with annoying monsters, then we have a serious problem.

It'd be something at least if the annoying monsters were at least different. But killing scores of hounds gets very old very quick. There are a very limited number of players that would find that enjoyable.

[quarague]

I really support the idea of adding various glass cannon monsters. They seem to be lacking at all depths. Practically all monsters with dangerous attacks also have a bazillion hit points.
This would also improve the game in the direction that different monsters become hard or easy for different classes. Tanky monsters are easy targets for warriors which are even more tanky but hard to take down for mages (although relatively easy to avoid). Glass cannon casters are dangerous for warriors but good targets for mages.

[Mondkalb]

@debo--
the fun part is sneaking around way out of depth, where any mistake could kill you. Loot is secondary to this. (At depth, you will find it in the first survivable vault.)

That's why I like to play rogues.

[Pete Mack]

@debo--
the fun part is sneaking around way out of depth, where any mistake could kill you. Loot is secondary to this. (At depth, you will find it in the first survivable vault.)

[debo]

Literally the only fun thing in angband is finding cool stuff. If we reduce frequency of both egos and arts, I think combat will have to get a lot more interesting than it is now (sounds like this is well underway), and probably the game length could be axed by a lot also?

If you look at Sil as an example, the game got more or less progressively harder with each version even though you find quite a bit of good stuff. In the latest version the drop rates for good items were boosted pretty significantly, and the game is still challenging enough (and had enough diversity of challenge) that this works out.

Re: glass cannons, poschengband has quite a few early casters that are fragile but seriously mess you up if you're missing a resist or three. The arch-vile and the logrus master are the ones that jump to mind, and I think those are likely both from zangband. The logrus master is even pretty dangerous in melee, which could be something to think about if we're designing some new early monsters

[PowerDiver]

I thought I had nerfed hounds, but I guess I made them tougher.

With symmetric LOS I get pack damage from all of

ZZZ
#Z#
#@#

assuming the middle top Z breathes on the intermediate Z causing splash damage.

What I thought was my nerf is that breaths are treated as bolts that explode into a ball, a la meteor swarm. In retrospect I guess that symmetric LOS dwarfs the so-called "nerf" change of a breath from a ball to a bolt.

I've been play testing. In another thread, where I bemoaned the change to reduce hound pack sizes leading to universal derision, I now understand that to make packs interesting you need symmetric LOS including knight moves. I now firmly stand by my opinion that reducing pack size was a mistake. But only if you do the other stuff right.