Stats

[Magnate]

I thought people might be interested in an early comparison of stats between 3.3.0 and v4.

For artifacts, current v4 is actually slightly more generous for DLs 1 to 7, then significantly less generous for the rest of the game (the y axis is "artifacts per game at this dungeon level"). It's amazing that two such different algorithms produce numbers that are even the same order of magnitude, let alone vaguely the same shape. I was expecting it to be much more different. It may still be too stingy (it's about twice as generous as it was a few days ago), but let's see how it plays. The optimum distribution is probably between the two lines.

For egos, the picture is significantly more complicated. First, we have to assume for the graph that each item gets three affixes or one theme (I haven't yet worked out how to calculate an average number of affixes per item, but I suspect 3 is not too far off). Second, we have to bear in mind that lots of affixes are nowhere near as good as the old egos - there are currently *no* bad or cursed egos in 3.3, whereas a number of affix items will be pretty much unusable because of Broken or Damaged. Third, I've added the themed items to the affix items, but they are only 1-10% of the total (<1% at shallower levels, rising smoothly to 9.7% at dl100). The stats don't tell us how many of the 3.3 egos are of the "high-end" variety now found as themes(*), but the overall impression is that v4 provides a higher quantity of ego items but with a smaller proportion being really good.

Which was kind of the point. (It's quite possible that affixes will need toning down deeper in the dungeon, but nobody's got that far yet.)

(*) Actually they do, but my SQL-fu isn't up to that yet.

I've just noticed that the colours are reversed on the two graphs. Just to keep you on your toes. Sorry.

EDIT: It's also worth pointing out that the affix items include all those non-egos which 3.3.0 would have termed merely "good", and will therefore not show up in the 3.3.0 counts. To enable a proper comparison I'd need to add "good" items from 3.3.0's stats. Off to work out how to do that ...

[Magnate]

So, I managed to construct the hideous query to extract the data on the 36 "high-end" egos from the 3.3.0 stats. (I also added the figures for MHDSM, Balance DSM and PDSM, so we can compare against all the themes in v4.)

The first graph looks pretty ugly, but it's not too bad - there's a reasonable correlation in about half of the cases. The big discrepancies are:

More than 4x as common in 3.3.0:
85x *Slay* Orc (#26)
27x Magi cloak (#7)
24x PDSM (#39)
13x Lordliness (#10)
9.7x *Slay* Troll (#27)
9.6x BSDM (#38)
8.3x Blessed (#35)
6.9x Magi crown (#8)
6.1x Haradrim (#32)
5.7x Dwarven armour/shields (#5)
4.9x Might (#9)
4.9x Westernesse (#20)

More than twice as common in v4:
3x Earthquakes
3x True Sight

This threw up some very interesting factoids:

PDSM appears approximately once every ten games in 3.3.0. You may well not see it, of course, but it's generated somewhere in levels 1-100. Balance DSM appears on average every other game!

Using alloc_max is hugely effective in limiting the generation of dross. This is the reason for the lack of *Slay* Orc/Troll weapons in v4.

The distribution curve of these items throughout the dungeon is astonishingly smooth in both cases (though something odd happens in v4 past dl90). Moreover, the relationship between the two curves is amazingly consistent, given their completely different routes to these items. See the second graph.

[artes]

Diagrams are cool.

[fizzix]

These look cool!

I was thinking about reworking wiz-stats, and I may still at some point in the near future. However, the stats module is probably better suited at answering these questions, which I think are useful for the head to head comparison.

Damage (and to-hit) is probably the trickiest thing to even out with affixes. What do the curves look like for?

weapons with +5 to dam or greater (especially in dlevels 1-10)
weapons with +10 to dam or greater
weapons with +15 to dam or greater
weapons with +20 to dam or greater
weapons with +25 to dam or greater

endgame quality weapons:
needs +15 to dam or greater, big dice (average 18 or greater, 18 is BoC in 3.3.0) and slay evil. Obviously we have many more options with dice in v4, so this should be an interesting comparison.

If you can't figure out how to SQL this, I'll try to put it in wiz-stats.

[Derakon]

I don't think requiring 18 average from dice and slay evil is a requirement for an "endgame quality" weapon. What matters is your average damage/round against Morgoth; I'd say if you can manage at least 400/round (per the 'I'nspect screen, which of course ignores misses and monster AC damage reduction) then you're in good shape.

Of course, that's harder to craft a query around...

[fizzix]

I don't think requiring 18 average from dice and slay evil is a requirement for an "endgame quality" weapon. What matters is your average damage/round against Morgoth; I'd say if you can manage at least 400/round (per the 'I'nspect screen, which of course ignores misses and monster AC damage reduction) then you're in good shape.

Of course, that's harder to craft a query around...

18 average from dice is a blade of chaos. SoS and MoD are both more. But the ease of the query is the main reason. It's still a bit unsatisfactory, because it may be possible for v4 to create a 50 pound weapon that you only get 3 blows max from.

[Derakon]

Right, what I'm saying is that requiring 18 average from dice will exclude a lot of endgame-quality weapons. I'd say more like SUM(to-dam + (dice + dice * sides) / 2) > 50. That might be a bit high; I don't have a good estimate for how much damage comes from off-weapon sources at the moment.

[Timo Pietilä]

18 average from dice is a blade of chaos. SoS and MoD are both more. But the ease of the query is the main reason. It's still a bit unsatisfactory, because it may be possible for v4 to create a 50 pound weapon that you only get 3 blows max from.

18 is Aule. Eonwe, Durin, Ringil, Zarcuthra etc. have smaller dice. I think only Deathwreaker, Doomcaller, Pain and Aule reach that 18.

Try 4d4: 4*2.5 = 10. 18 is way too much.

[fizzix]

18 is Aule. Eonwe, Durin, Ringil, Zarcuthra etc. have smaller dice. I think only Deathwreaker, Doomcaller, Pain and Aule reach that 18.

Try 4d4: 4*2.5 = 10. 18 is way too much.

I specifically do not care about artifacts though. If we were testing the randart code, this would be important to consider. I maintain that BoC, SoS and MoD all have average of 18.

[Magnate]

I specifically do not care about artifacts though. If we were testing the randart code, this would be important to consider. I maintain that BoC, SoS and MoD all have average of 18.

Fortunately we do log the +dam of every item by kind, depth and origin, so this query will be doable (albeit syntactically difficult for a novice). I'll see if I can do it during my next dull day at work (Monday).

[Antoine]

Fortunately we do log the +dam of every item by kind, depth and origin, so this query will be doable (albeit syntactically difficult for a novice). I'll see if I can do it during my next dull day at work (Monday).

Will your next dull day at work be Tuesday by any chance?

A.

[Magnate]

Will your next dull day at work be Tuesday by any chance?

Probably - though they threw me a curveball on Friday and asked me to draft a Board paper in three hours. That was pretty interesting.

[Magnate]

Consumables stats

So, I ran the consumables stats, and the headline is that v4 is slightly more generous across the board, by virtue of there now being slightly fewer weapon and armour base items to compete with them. There is a baseline differential of about 15% which is the case for:

all stat potions
rods of Detection
wands of Annihilation
wands/rods of TO
mushrooms of Vigor
rods of Healing
staves of Banishment
staves of the Magi

But there's a significant increase in all the things which have been given the OF_GOOD flag:

rods of Speed
potions *Enlightenment*
scrolls of Rune of Protection
potions of Experience
scrolls of *Acquirement*
potions of Life
scrolls of Mass Banishment
potions of Augmentation
scrolls of Banishment
scrolls of *Destruction*
potions of *Healing*
scrolls of Acquirement

... this varies from about 2x (the bottom half of that list) to 5x (rods of Speed are stupendously rare in V). It's clear that the OF_GOOD mechanism promotes these things to be much more findable - I hadn't realised how big a proportion of drops must be "good" or "great". Alloc probs of these items will need to be adjusted at least in line with V (and I think there's a consensus that 3.3.0 is a little too generous, though we don't want to go back to 3.1.x levels).

Bizarrely this trend doesn't hold for the dungeon books, which are about 25% *less* common in v4, despite getting the OF_GOOD flag. I'm not sure why that is, but it's easy enough to correct if they are now too rare.

N.B. The mechanism for choosing a base object kind hasn't changed - the only changes are that some base objects are no longer findable because they're now provided by affixes or themes (DSMs, MoD, SoS etc.), and some consumables got given the OF_GOOD flag so they don't get excluded from "good" and "great" drops.

[Magnate]

The distribution curve of these items throughout the dungeon is astonishingly smooth in both cases (though something odd happens in v4 past dl90).

I found this last night: the ego_item.txt for v4 had a bunch of ill-thought-out alloc_max values which were less than 100, which meant that around DLs 85-90 a whole bunch of affixes stopped being available. This meant that the related themes suddenly got much less common, hence the dip at the end of the graph.

I'm just about to release a new version of v4 (one bug left to fix) which sorts out the knowledge menus and allows squelching of affixes and themes. This version will have these maxima corrected to 100 for the time being, until we get more reports of how the endgame plays. I'll also make some adjustments to the commonness of the "good" consumables (see other post).

[buzzkill]

@ Magnate: Kudos on v4. I can actually get excited about some of your wacky ideas now that they are be developed in a pseudo-variant environment. The whole affix thing is looking very cool.