Level Feelings

[Mark]

I thought I'd start a new thread rather than post to the Spellbook spawning one.

Derakon recommends playing with level feelings turned off. The original idea behind feelings (perhaps, no one really knows) was to help players decide if a level was worth exploring. Presumably so 'good' items could be found more quickly. I can understand wanting (loot-based) feelings because they are (perceived as) a 'better-than-nothing' guide to find good items.

So... ...imagine a birth option which was 'No Loot Feelings, Good Items Spawn 25% more often'. ....would I prefer that option? Who knows if 25% would make up for the lack of guiding feelings... ..but I'd certainly give it a try.

Just like we have a gold boost with selling turned off (so the game is less about shopping) why not have a loot-drop boost with feelings turned off (as the game should be less about having crudely-set/often-misleading expectations about a level) ?

[Grotug]

Seems fair. 25% might be high. 10-15% might be enough boost. I've also wondered if good luck charm amulets wouldn't be a fun addition to the game. Basically another stat to add to the game (to replace the loss of Charisma if you will) which, while worn, increases the chances new levels generate better stuff, monsters drop better stuff and shops stock better stuff. So a RandArt ring might look like:

<+3> speed, luck, Dexterity. <+3> to luck might mean +15% chance to find good stuff (where each additional +1 to luck adds +5% chance to find good stuff).

Characters would also have innate luck rating; hobbits and gnomes could be luckier than half trolls and humans I guess.

[Pete Mack]

Once upon a time, this was called autoscum

[Sky]

let's be realistic here for a second. Scumming was considered a bad practice because the game ran on a University server in 1990 and generating levels took up resources. In a game that has its own cheats built in and that can be defeated in intent by bringing up task manager, scumming is hardly a condemnable practice.
There's been already a scum nerf, as the feelings do not show until well into the exploration of the level, meaning you cant just stand on stairs until a 4-7 pops up.
Derakon seems to believe that if you are not powerdiving you are hurting the community or something like that. To others, collecting randards is the core of the game.

Having said that, i'll probably never move on from 4.1.2 so good luck with disabling/removing level feelings, on my end, i like to know that i'm on a 4-8 because a sling of buckland got generated and i sure aint leaving until i found it.
I'm also partial to knowing when it's 4-2 instead if im making a decision whether to challenge a rgoup of plasma/time hounds for that last mysterious item icon.

[Thraalbee]

+1 to that. It is even more important in ironman games which is my thing. If you only plan to fully explore 20-40 levels in the entire game, you sure don't want to pick only the 9-1's.

[Grotug]

Well, I've never scummed levels; seems like it would cheapen the experience. But to properly address Pete Mack's point: maybe the forced descent option could unlock an extra game stat: luck as described above, as compensation for choosing a more challenging mode of play? Whereby you only get the luck stat/items if you play forced descent.

[wobbly]

Did someone suggest removing them? I've ranted that they are an abomination a couple of times and even I haven't removed them from my version. My problem isn't scumming per se. Yes it means you are a scummy scummer who scums but plenty of people enjoy scumming and I agree with enjoying yourself. My issue is when scumming becomes some kind of "best play". The number of top players I see stair scumming or advocating it suggests this is the case. That seems non-ideal to me. Does it need fixing? Well no, it's been there a while and the game hasn't exploded. Is it worth considering that there could be a better way of handling this? I certainly think so.

[Derakon]

Derakon seems to believe that if you are not powerdiving you are hurting the community or something like that. To others, collecting randards is the core of the game.

Please don't put words into my mouth. I advocate that players should try turning feelings off because I believe that that is a superior way to enjoy the game. For similar reasons I have advocated for turning selling off. But these are fundamentally subjective things where the community is divided, which is why they are optional. If you try no-feelings or no-selling and decide that it's not for you, then that's fine, you are absolutely free to continue playing the way you're most comfortable with and I don't judge you for it.

For what it's worth, I frequently play no-feelings no-selling forced-descent, which both invalidates stairscumming (and diving, to some extent) and means that there's a strictly limited number of levels to explore. I have never felt that this resulted in a shortage of equipment, nor that I had to stick around and explore every single level to make sure I'd gotten all the loot from it.

My perception of level feelings is that they're based almost entirely on fear of missing out: there's something "good" on this level, and I'm not leaving until I find it! I take two issues with this, which are why I advocate against level feelings. The first is that fear (or really, anxiety) is a negative emotion and I have enough of that in my life already, thank you. If I can cut some out by flipping a switch then I'll do it. The second is that (outside of forced-descent), there's an infinite number of levels. It is a choice to stay on a level, just as it is a choice to leave it. Therefore you are always missing out on the levels that you are choosing to not explore because you're staying on the current level. What if you stuck around on a 6 treasure feeling, but if you'd taken that staircase instead, Bladeturner would've been in the starting room? You can't know that wasn't the case.

Generated content in Angband is not special. Unless you turn preserve off.

[Sky]

I have an idea. how about,

we put selling enable by default again, and we add both sell off and no level feeling as an option ?