Halls of Mist is coming soon

[Mikko Lehtinen]

how about having a chance for a summoner to draw the attention of a great demon that then eats him? Would naturally cap the amount of monsters summoned and might be fun flavor.

It is fun. It could at least be an alternative mechanic for some demonologists from the realm of Skultgard.

Also, the Thin White Duke is the boss??? That is awesome. Is there a sort of Labyrinth theme?

It's darker than Labyrinth. It's my own world, I'm just borrowing parts of the Bowie's stage persona. Lots of the theme is EyAngband legacy, faeries and such.

I'll actually desperately need a description for the Duke. I want to get the flavour just right. Maybe someone with English as a first language would like to help me?

Let's begin from a slightly modified Wikipedia entry.

Impeccably dressed in white shirt, black trousers and waistcoat, The Duke is a hollow man who sang songs of romance with an agonised intensity while feeling nothing, "ice masquerading as fire". A nasty character indeed. Originally he was human, but that was a long, long time ago, and he has sold his soul a thousand times.

Whoops, I need to run! Some more traits from Wikipedia:

The persona has been described as "a mad aristocrat", "an amoral zombie", and "an emotionless Aryan superman". For Bowie himself, The Duke was "a nasty character indeed", and later, "an ogre for me".

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Would that be solved by increasing the reward for the summoners?

I suppose that that's really thinking of the summoned monsters as weapons of the summoner rather than enemies in their own right. But that seems good flavour to me. It fits well with the chance for the summons to dissolve back into the mist (though 10% each turn sounds pretty high), in terms of making them feel more ephemeral, meaning that the summoner is the one you really need to take down, and stopping them from taking over the level.

I have a feeling that we are getting close to the final mechanic and flavour. Summoned monsters are phantasmal creatures shaped of the Mist, with a 3% chance of dissolving each turn. You don't get any loot or XP for killing them. To compensate, summoners have more loot and grant more XP. Some magic items erase phantasms easily.

Jujuben and buzzkill, do you think you could live with this?

[jujuben]

I like the flavor of it quite a bit. The math may need tweaking, but that's what play testing is for.

[buzzkill]

I have a feeling that we are getting close to the final mechanic and flavour. Summoned monsters are phantasmal creatures shaped of the Mist, with a 3% chance of dissolving each turn. You don't get any loot or XP for killing them. To compensate, summoners have more loot and grant more XP. Some magic items erase phantasms easily.

Jujuben and buzzkill, do you think you could live with this?

Are phantasmal creatures otherwise exactly the same as normal creatures. What I'm getting at is, can phantasmal creatures summon even more phantasmal creatures?

I'd have to play it to see how it feels, but 3% seems low, but then again I'm sure you have tested it and that's good enough for me.

DAJ does something similar with illusory summons. They are usually quite out of depth but have greatly reduced HP's and attacks to compensate, but are otherwise indistinguishable from their normal counterparts. They can be summoned from out of LoS, which works very well and are occasionally able to be recognized as illusions. I find them annoying, but in the best possible way.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Not tested yet. My development laptop is somewhere else.

Well, I'll start at 5 % then, and with completely normal creatures. Mist critters summoning more of the same sounds good to me.

I've been thinking about a Staff of Wind Control often, and now I finally think I've found good mechanics for it. For some time, all phantasms have a 1/3 chance of dissolving each turn, and powder vial explosions gain +1 radius.

Oh, and a weapons of Reality (which already exist) will dissolve phantasms with a single hit.

[Scatha]

With the originally suggested 10%, phantasms would stick around an average of 10 rounds (of course it's stochastic, and some would last longer with some much shorter). At that point I'm not sure if it's ever really worth the player's efforts to try to kill them -- presumably it should sometimes be? If not, perhaps 10% is fine. At 3%, you can expect just over 30 rounds typically, which is long enough to make an impact, but short enough that you might try to weather it.

Of course if you can get phantasmal summoners, who can themselves summon summoners, it might be possible to get the ever-increasing numbers. Roughly speaking this depends on whether the chance a mist summoner summons another mist summoner on a given turn is greater or smaller than the chance it dissipates.

The various ways to make the phantasmal creatures easier to deal with sound cute.

[Derakon]

I want to just point out that all of you are arguing over mechanics in a game that you haven't gotten to play yet. Let's give Mikko the benefit of the doubt here that he's made an enjoyable game, hey? I'm not saying this discussion is a wasted effort -- brainstorming ways to handle various problems is not a waste of time -- just that if Mikko's enjoying playing his own game, then I don't think he should feel obliged to make changes based on the arguments of people who haven't played it.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Yeah, playtesting always rules over theorizing.

This discussion was largely about flavour and elegance of mechanics, though, and they can be discussed even without playing the game. The proposed system clearly wins in this department. Hell, we're talking about creatures formed of mysterious blue mist in a megadungeon called Halls of Mist. Could a better flavour even exist?

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I'll continue to talk attributes and skills in the other thread. Here's a little interlude.

Halls of Mist is a difficult game, just like its predecessors. I thought it might be worthwhile to write three strategy guides for beginners. Here's really short synopsises of what the three most essential guides would include. Maybe I'll actually write these at some point, or maybe I'll cover the same information in my skill guides.

1) Assassin's Guide. To do well in Halls of Mist, you need to learn how to distract (confuse, scare, sleep, or blind) tough enemies with spells or powder vials, and then kill them with critical hits. You can increase your ambush chance by using an enchanted weapon or by boosting your combat skill with a magical buff, like Heroism. Basically anything that gives "plusses" to hit in Angband also increases your ambush chance against distracted opponents in Halls of Mist. Rogue is the specialist here but everybody -- save maybe mage -- needs to use these tactics all the time. If you are familiar with FayAngband, you may know these tactics already.

2) Swashbuckler's Guide. How to use terrain features for fun and profit. Take cover against spells and missiles by standing behind a table or platform. Jump on tables and use high ground to help you defend against melee attacks. In Halls of Mist, you can attack two opponents in melee just as well as when attacking only one, so you may sometimes want to hop on a table to fight an entire orc tribe! Hop over bushes and flee tough enemies through wilderness rooms. Most enemies are probably worse jumpers than you are, with 40% in Jumping; orcs, golems, and zombies are especially bad with only 20% in Jumping.

3) Seer's Guide. Identifying stuff is not at all straightforward in Halls of Mist. You need to use your brain. First of all, you need to have at least 20 points in Memory + Wisdom to be able to use Lore proficiencies. (Use proficiencies by pressing 'p'.) If you have MEM+WIS at 30 or higher, you get to identify your whole pack at once or do some other cool things. Stand near a bookshelf to gain a +3 bonus in these Lore calculations, or draw a Circle of Knowledge to get +7. Or you might want to save your Lore point for Alertness (bonuses to AC, saving throw, and detecting traps and invisible creatures until you leave the dungeon level), and instead identify items by using them.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Wait, did you just say the game frequently generates scenarios that are unwinnable from the point of character generation? That sounds more than a bit cruel!

On reflection, I think what I originally meant was that Halls of Mist is often unwinnable for you, the player, even if you are playing well, unless you get lucky with loot and dungeon levels. An unlucky game is probably winnable for some theoretical superintelligence but who really cares about that? Even if you are a good player, you keep making tiny mistakes that will eventually kill you in Halls of Mist.

If a player could keep scumming for experience and loot at shallow depth, the game would become winnable for even an average player. In this way, scumming (if it was viable) would be "necessary for winning", and therefore bad.

LostTemplar, do you agree with this? I tried to use your definition for when scumming is bad in a game. I think it was a very good rule of thumb.

[LostTemplar]

No, actually. At first scumming is something ill defined, so just let consider very boring and very long 'farm'. It is bad, if it is ALLWAYS required. If it is only required in unlucky games it is ok. Just like in old angband, if character stats got swapped by nexus, most players will just restart, but someone can spend long time for quite boring play and recover.

So what, if farming is too easy for player, so player farm even if he can win without ?
You may think that such situation is strictly bad, but I think it is not, players should be allowed to play suboptimally, to spent long time to get things, that better ones will get in short time. This is important, that the game can be won in some suboptimal way, and then replayed in some better way.

It may be good idea to reward playstyle of your choice with high score, e.g. killing too much monsters per dungeon level can lower score.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Well, the point is that I can't win the game with my current skill level, no matter how hard I try. It's too difficult for my skills. Maybe if I got super lucky (let's say 1 % chance for that) I could win one game.

Or perhaps if I practiced for a couple of years, dying in hundreds of games. Maybe I could learn to win 30% of games or something like that. Hard to say.

So for me, practically speaking, farming is always required to win.

Halls of Mist isn't really designed to be winnable for most people. It's just fun to get deeper and deeper until you die.

[LostTemplar]

So for me, practically speaking, farming is always required to win.

So you can win with farming ? How long do you farm ?

At least in Angband farming is suboptimal, it is definitely harder to win, if you go slow.
Boredom leads to mistakes, mistakes result in character loss.

Look at SIL, at first it was claimed to be hard to win, and Morgoth was claimed to be impossible to kill.

Halls of Mist isn't really designed to be winnable for most people. It's just fun to get deeper and deeper until you die.

If getting deeper is considered a goal, then it seems, that staying at lower depth is definitely suboptimal.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

This is important, that the game can be won in some suboptimal way, and then replayed in some better way.

Maybe this is where our real disagreement is! I agree that this is a fine design choice for many or maybe most games, but Halls of Mist is not designed like this.

Mist is designed to produce a constant adrenaline rush (with good pacing, so that you can have easy dungeon levels once in a while) until you finally die.

I want to maximize the moments where the player almost dies. I play roguelikes for these moments. I think it isn't possible to design a game like this to be always winnable by boring play.

[LostTemplar]

You keep claiming, your game is too hard, well, ok, probably so.
Replace word 'win' in all my post into something like 'dive to level 5' or whatever your 'not too hard for the newbie' goal is. So, it is still good, then the same goal can be achived in 5 min by good player and in 5 days by newbie.

always winnable by boring play.

And I never say something like this.